The Next Great Adventure
by Satellites on Parade
Summary: She hears his voice in there, just for a second – just in the instant between not existing and coming home. And that's when she knows, however delirious it may make her feel, that he's still out there. / Post-"Endgame." Wally/Artemis, with some others.
1. Chapter 1

**So many plans, and so much anguish and grief to channel into them. Regardless, _I do not accept what happened today_ and I am going to write myself out of this mess if it's the last thing I** **do.**

* * *

_To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure._

— J.K. Rowling

* * *

Wally's cell phone is deactivated a week after he's gone, and though Artemis has spent every one of those seven days sore with grief, it doesn't really hit her until then, when she calls it and the shrill error message cuts through her ear. (Instead of his voice – "Yo, you've reached the Wall-man, leave it at the beep and I'll get back to you in a flash. Shut up, Artemis; I'm hilarious!")

_The number you dialed is not a working number. Please check the number and dial again. El número que ha marcado no es un número de trabajo. Por favor, compruebe el número y vuelva a marcar. Le numéro que vous avez composé n'est pas un numéro valide. S'il vous plaît vérifier le—_

Something cold settles in her stomach, a stone, clammy with certainty. She'd managed to get in one call before the service had gone offline, and it had been four in the morning and he'd been gone for sixteen hours, nearly 58,000 absent ticks in the emptiness of their apartment, and the Watchtower, and asunder remnants of the Cave.

"Hey, it's me," she'd said, but the shake in her voice had betrayed her, and Brucely had lifted his head from his paws and blinked at her. "Listen, we're out of eggs; can you pick some up, if you _ever_ actually decide to come home? Call me back, stupid. You're the only one who actually has a key to this place."

(When she'd come home from the arctic, alone, heavy, she'd had to use the spare stored under the doormat. When she'd come home from the summit, he'd carried her over the threshold and held her for the few hours they had, nothing more than that, nothing more than knowing she was there.)

And still the world turns, no matter how petulantly she digs her heels against the spin. It is a mad ball, tumult and turbulence, sucking the air out of her. Even as she haphazardly folds up her shabby green costume and stuffs it into the bottom drawer where Wally keeps the clothes he doesn't like, even as she stands between Mary and Rudolph West on summer-scented grass in front of a slab of white stone that had once been hewn for her, even as she wonders if Dick's laugh had ever really been real, it does not stop turning at all.

Kaldur is the one who holds her the most, which is saying something, considering Bart will not let go of her for hours after the snow has left her skin; Kaldur rubs circles onto her back and tells her that he understands and her pain doubles, breaks in half at the center of her chest, like splintered wood. She pulls brambles onto herself and bites her tongue and tastes metal in her heart, and on her teeth, and she forces herself to do all of her crying in six days so she can finish it, finish the rawness in her eyes and the swollen corners and the listlessness in her limbs. She doesn't sleep.

She moves out of the apartment. It's too large for her, and its warmth is now stale and colorless. Two of the boxes break when she tries to haul them out to the car, and a framed photograph of him tumbles out of one of them and shatters on the concrete. She leaves it there.

Her new place in Gotham smells dank and has dark walls with cobwebs on them and it feels more like home than she could bear to let the hardwood floors of Palo Alto feel like anymore. She's only two blocks away from her mother, six blocks away from the diner with the greasy red booths where Wally had tried time and again to help her with her Chemistry homework, twelve blocks and three subway stops away from Wayne Manor. The summer is muggy in her weary city, gray and overcast and tasteless, and it rains some nights, dampening the heat. She can't see the stars no matter how hard she looks and, in a way, it's a comfort, because Gotham and its jagged skyline are the inverse of every sunny string that Wally had tied to her fingers, and if it blinds her to the parts of the world that he'd shown her, maybe it will start to dull the yellow nausea souring her bones.

Her costume is orange now. It's a way to cope, she supposes, encasing herself in the bitter black lies she'd laced herself in on that mission, the absolute eradication of any emotion, any admission of homesickness that can't be alleviated just by breaking mirrors with her knuckles until they bleed. It's the color of rust and secrecy and maybe if she resigns herself to those things, every taunting whisper she's been running from, everything will start to make sense again.

Watching Dick leave, though – watching Zatanna watch him; watching Garfield inquire with a cracking voice if maybe, just maybe, Dick's faking this one, too; watching Conner sleep in closets for three nights and never explain it to anyone; watching M'gann cry into her cake batter, a recipe untouched for years now that she's grown so much older and cake is for children, for celebrations of birth – convinces her very easily that expecting sense is nothing more than the dream of a little girl who had watched her sister leave her behind.

Artemis sets down her bow and picks up a crossbow and leaves the windows open at night, and the sirens are a lullaby.

* * *

They don't find the proof Kaldur's asking them for – just a lot of gunfire and shouting. Lex Luthor's charity in helping to save the world has, apparently, finally managed to ingratiate tighter security to him. Karen says that if they wait another week, another month, maybe, they'll have better luck, and Artemis resigns herself to agreement.

She'd been sloppy on the mission to begin with, anyway. Seeing Bart in the suit is only bad if she's looking at him from behind, because though he is shorter and smaller than the swaggering freckle-faced clown she'd met at fifteen, it takes her a few blinks from that angle to remind herself that they are not the same. It is not a helpful contribution when she's been assigned to covering him from the back, but Mal doesn't call her out on her blank-outs, nor does Karen, but Bart hugs her around the midsection and his skinny arms try to assure her of blamelessness. She pats his head with a hesitant hand and forces her eyes away from the red goggles and he releases her with reluctance.

"So we've got nothing?" she barks to them, her hands curling into involuntary fists. They're walking back to the SuperCycle in a straggling group, and Bart is limping slightly. The Kansas night is deep and silent despite its dry heat. The sound of the cicadas is too familiar to be welcome.

"'Cept a few bruises," Karen mutters dryly, prodding at her elbow. "We'll get them next time. We just need to reformulate our plan of attack."

"Tch_yeah_," Artemis scoffs out under her breath. "Because _attack_ worked _so_ well this time."

"You got something to say, Artemis?" Mal asks when they reach the Cycle, though not unkindly. He turns to her, his eyes serious behind the golden Guardian mask.

Artemis looks him sharply in the eye and opens her mouth, but Bart's hand is at her elbow and she quiets, looking down at him. His face is imploring but set.

"Next time," he tells her quietly.

She wrenches her vision away from him. He's five inches and a mop of red hair from being a memorial hologram that she can't bring herself to talk to, only stare at.

"Yeah," she mutters, shouldering him off and clambering into her seat. Karen and Mal trade private glances that she doesn't miss, and Bart zips into place beside her, folding his hands in his lap. He's been itching at the suit all night, pulling at it in certain places, fiddling with it and picking at it like a scab.

The ride back to the Smallville zeta tube is short, but the silence draws it out like glue off a finger. They land behind the general store and Sphere curls herself back into a ball, rolling tentatively into the zeta tube, the first to teleport back to the Watchtower. Mal and Karen follow, one after the other, and Bart is the last, though he lingers as though waiting for her to precede him. She can see a purpling shiner forming on his left eyelid that swells one blue-green eye shut. Poor kid.

Kaldur doesn't look at her with disappointment during the short debriefing, bless him, but his hand clasps her shoulder when Mal finishes recounting their empty-handed escapade and her eyes dart up to meet his. She gulps something down at the understanding in his eyes, and she knows that he's releasing her, so she steps back from the line, carefully pulling her mask off.

She wonders where Dick is. She doesn't dare think Bruges.

Her bones creak with aching and exhaustion, though she's barely used them at all tonight. She can still smell the wheat and corn on her costume from Smallville, and part of her can still hear the crickets, still see the sparse cars rolling down the dirt roads with their lights turned off. She tries to swallow the summer down as she steps into the zeta tube.

"_Recognized. Tigress. B07._"

She sighs as the machine whirs to life, rolling her shoulders and neck back until they pop. Brucely's going to be hounding her for food when she gets home; no pun intended, in retrospect, _damn it_, this isn't the time to be funny. She stands still when the light brightens, breathing in and out through her nose.

For a second, just a second, as it is every time, she feels weightless and fizzing and without bounds. She is particles of light and sound, scattering across space, stationary but infinite. Her feet are tingling and her breath is no longer coming and she wonders what it would be like to stay here, stay matterless, for longer than just an instant.

She realizes almost immediately that, somehow, the instant has lasted just a beat longer than it normally does. Before she can worry, before she can register anything more, she hears it.

It starts out quiet and far-off and then it swells into a muffled thump at her ear, at her skin, and then it darts into the distance again, an echo a hundred miles or more away. It is clear and urgent and close and she can touch it, taste it, and she _knows_ it.

"—_rtemis_—"

Solid ground slams into place beneath her heels and she comes out of the Gotham City zeta tube gasping for balance. She stumbles forward, bracing herself at the phone booth wall with one hand, staring with wide eyes at the grimy concrete of the alleyway.

She tries to even herself, tries to steady the lurching world. Because for an instant, for a burning, blazing breath of an instant, she had heard Wally. Wally had been in there with her.

She whirls around immediately and slams her code into the recognizer pad and the computer states her name, and her palms sweat and she shivers as the tech roars to life again.

She closes her eyes and passes through the zeta beam, and comes back into cohesion at the Watchtower again, and she hears nothing in between. Karen, Mal, Bart, and Kaldur all turn at the same time to frown at her, and Bart is the first to open his mouth, but Artemis has scrambled around already, punching the same Gotham City code into the keypad.

She screws her eyes shut so tightly that it feels like her head may burst open, and she keeps herself stock-still and holds her breath, and the journey lasts its normal duration, half of a heartbeat, in silence, before the Gotham smells struggle up her nose once more.

Her eyelids come apart and she slumps against the phone booth wall, her hair matting into the grime on the window. A car alarm starts to howl in the distance like an animal and she can hear someone cursing, but it is all dampened to her ears.

She takes out her cell phone with shaking hands and dials Dick's number.

It only lasts one ring before she comes to her senses and hangs up, but her heart does not stop throbbing frenetically against her chest.

She types in the recognition code again and wonders how quickly fingers can blister.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for all the really wonderful feedback, guys! I'm glad you're enjoying. Sorry the update took a bit; I was emotionally traumatized all through Monday and am now at approximately sixty-eight percent emotional trauma. **

**So after the whopper at the end of the last chapter, I took a second to slow it down. Obviously huge things like what happened can't be resolved right away – a lot of time is going to pass before this fic reaches its conclusion. (Time... in the fic, not in terms of me writing; uh.) Lots of plot, but hopefully it's compensated for in the last scene.**

**Thanks to Libberoni, light of my life, cheerleader extraordinaire, and Emma, for her pitchforks.**

* * *

The weeks roll on, slowed to sap's pace, every detail of them encased in an amber that Artemis cannot penetrate. When she isn't out on missions, she stays indoors, unable to conjure up the interest or ability to step outside. Gotham's weather is humid and dreary, and it only worsens how cooped-up and pinned she feels. Despite her lack of an appetite, she eats, because she knows she has to; she dumps Brucely's food haphazardly into his dish, and a lot of it spills, but he doesn't seem to mind, scarfing it all up with a wagging tail.

Brucely had handled the move all right, honestly – though Artemis supposes that he would have had to get used to change, after she suddenly vanished from his life, only to return, swapped with the young man who had taken care of him all those months. She thinks maybe it's easier for the dog, because she has let nothing in the apartment carry Wally's smell – all of his clothes, all of his books, all of his spare bags of chips; she had packed them all into boxes and left them on the Wests' porch.

They call her every day. It's only them and her mother that she ever has the strength to pick up the phone for, because every time it rings there's a part of her that wonders if a familiar laugh will greet her on the other end, the sound of warm and even breathing that she doesn't hear anymore. They ask her how she's doing and they invite her over for dinner and one time Mary says, "Artemis, sweetheart; you know you'll always have a home here," and Artemis believes her, promises herself that one day she'll be able to take them up on it, when Wally's old bedroom has been cleaned out and gutted, when his high school Chemistry tests are taken off of the fridge.

She knows that isolation is not a pragmatic solution to the gaping hole in her chest. She knows that she should be letting everyone clasp her hands, letting everyone hold her, and she knows that she should be _sleeping_, but there's something at the edge of her body, razor sharp and bitter, that keeps it all at bay. Just for now, she keeps telling herself, over and over – just for now, just until tomorrow; tomorrow she'll suck it all up like a grown-up and forget about him.

She wishes tomorrow could be yesterday.

* * *

She starts to take the zeta tubes everywhere she goes. Even after two months, nothing ever happens in that In-Between, and she doesn't hear her name no matter how much she strains her ears and tries not to breathe, but she refuses to accept that it had ever been untrue. She knows Wally's voice as well as she knows the sound of thunder, or water running from a tap, or cicadas in the summer; she knows it better than her own.

She'd only needed to hear it once; she needs no further evidence, no further implications, because in that single instant between not existing and coming home, he had _been there_, and that's when she had known, madness be damned, that he's still out there. He's running in an infinite line, limbs pumping and eyes locked on the whiteness and the stars ahead of him, waiting to learn how to turn for home.

She doesn't tell Dick about it, or Kaldur or Jade or even Brucely. She doesn't tell anyone. She's gotten so used to keeping things locked inside of her, far beneath the water and the darkness, that she sees no other logical alternative anymore. She's more comfortable encroached inside of herself and all of the shadows that live there than she is telling people the truth, and that's that she is not all right, and she is not fine, and Wally had almost touched her on the zeta plane and it had snapped her out of her walking sleep.

Instead of speaking about it, instead of acknowledging that it had happened to anyone but herself (because the second anyone else knows, the second it's not only hers, a thousand doors are opened to her being crazy), she swings through missions corporeally but not consciously and then she goes home, drags out every old hacking program Dick had taught her how to use when they were in high school, and _searches_.

She'd learned once, during Captain Atom's mandatory history lessons on the superhero world, that Green Lanterns are not the only beings in the universe with that shade – there are the Black Lanterns, the darkness to eradicate the color; there are the Yellow Lanterns, spreading fear like plaque; and there are the Blue Lanterns – the ones who hope, and who search, and who wander, though they may not ever find. She and Dick had joked with Wally that, by those standards, he would find a blue ring any day soon, but now, as Artemis forgets to eat and refuses to sleep and takes countless zeta tube trips that she doesn't need, she supposes that she would suit it more.

She wonders, through her bleary eyes, if it's possible to be hopelessly hopeful.

* * *

LexCorp has been their only accessible tie to the Light since June. Luthor's presence in the international spotlight as the world's savior (which makes Artemis spit) has given him little choice but to be public, and Queen Bee has been off the grid for months, as has Black Manta. Leads on Vandal Savage have turned up little, despite Barbara's skill and tenacity – Artemis can't help wondering what their chances would be if Dick were still around.

Regardless, the company and its CEO have been the focus of the Team's reconnaissance efforts for quite some time (but they don't really feel like much of a Team anymore to Artemis, not really; there are so _many_ of them, hardly the even eight that could squeeze onto one couch and fall asleep together). Kaldur is sending squads on recon missions to the company and its various locations frequently, but it's all just a lot of watching and waiting as Luthor becomes the face of Earth's new General Secretary-to-be. Artemis doesn't particularly like either action.

On occasion, they receive transmissions from M'gann, Garfield, and Conner on Mars, and the three of them are slated to return to Earth soon after helping B'arzz ensure that there are no further Scarabs lurking in the planet's mines, no suspicion that the Reach had targeted it.

Artemis misses Conner and M'gann – that's an emotion she's sure that she's feeling. She doesn't know why she aches for their presence in particular; maybe it's Conner's stunning ability to be a comfort without saying or asking anything it all, or M'gann's arms engulfing her, holding her when she buckles.

"We'll be home soon," M'gann promises her one night, after everyone else has left – the illuminated holographic screen spreads out over Artemis's head and makes M'gann look like a giant. Conner is hovering behind her, his eyes locked on Artemis, fidgeting just slightly in the cold temperature. Garfield is in bed.

"How soon?" Artemis asks, ashamed of how hoarse her voice sounds.

"Seventy-nine hours and sixteen minutes," Conner replies automatically, and when Artemis glances up at the screens again, he's smiling at her just slightly. She returns it, but it's wan and pathetic and it makes M'gann look forlorn.

"I wish I could hug you right now," M'gann tells her, fierce honesty as always. She's learned to speak her mind now that the distance will not let her mind speak for her. "I want to so badly."

"That'd be nice," Artemis agrees dully. "How're things?"

"Well, we've found some boom tube energy signals on the eastern side of the planet, but nothing to indicate that Mars has had any visitors by that mode of transit," M'gann says, frowning slightly and tapping her chin. "Mostly we've just combed a lot of caverns for Scarabs, but we've turned up empty, which is good, I suppose." Her lips quirk. "Gar really likes exploring."

"Tell me about it." Conner snorts. "I had to pull him out of a pit yesterday."

"Is it good to be home?" Artemis inquires.

M'gann's frown deepens and she worries her lip, looking down. Finally, she shrugs a bit jerkily.

"It's fine," she mutters, but then brightens infinitesimally. "I've got Conner and Gar, and B'arzz is really great."

"That's good."

"How are..." M'gann lifts her eyes again, regarding Artemis with gentle concern. "_You_ doing?"

Artemis can think of no adequate way to accurately answer a question she's sick of hearing, so she settles for looking down at the metal floor and shrugging.

There's silence for a good few seconds.

"We'll be home soon," Conner promises quietly. He knows exactly what she wants to hear, somehow.

"Not soon enough," Artemis laughs emptily, trying to bring a joking air to the conversation – but neither of them falls for it, so M'gann blows her a kiss and Conner waves his hand and the feed cuts to black.

Artemis lets out a breath that makes her sore and turns to go. Her hair smells musky even to her own nostrils, so she promises herself that she'll shower when she gets home – she has tea with her Mom tomorrow, and she has to buy groceries, and Black Canary wants her to try her hand at training the freshmen.

She knows it's ridiculous, but she plans to be extra rough on Tim and Cassie.

* * *

Conner and M'gann and Garfield come through the Watchtower zeta tubes at exactly the time they Conner had predicted, and Artemis cuffs Conner in a hug that doesn't budge him. He pats her shoulder with great delicacy, keeping his strength in hard check, and M'gann joins the hug as well, her hand bracing the back of Artemis's head. Garfield buries his face in Artemis's abdomen when he worms his way into the middle, and Artemis breathes in all of their warmth, all of their caring, and M'gann fills her mind with the sounds of the ocean.

They come apart like clouds and don't speak and Kaldur doesn't say anything when Artemis stands in the back of the debriefing room, waiting for them to be finished.

* * *

She goes a little crazier each day, her fingers nearly bruising as she pounds at keyboards and thumbs through books on zetal planes, picking at food, sleeping little. There's a part of her that knows that she's being pathetic, and that she is strong and callous and hard at the edges and she has coped with loss time and time again and this one should be no different, and to delude herself is selfish, dragging his memory out of its grave time and time again.

Apparently it starts to show. Artemis has paid little attention to the world around her, relying on natural reflex to move around in it, but her natural reflex is sharp and inherently violent and when she takes "disarm" to mean "break both arms," Kaldur does not seem to approve.

"Artemis," he says to her, his severity still gentle, and Artemis has to suck in a breath at being addressed by her name, as she's insisted that everyone call her Tigress and nothing else. "He was merely a guard; you had no reason to—"

"If he was a mere guard, why does it matter what I did?" she retorts. "He'll be fine. Give him a couple of months. We got the intel on LexCorp, didn't we?"

Kaldur sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. The action throws Artemis back, and she feels suddenly smaller.

Even Conner is frowning at her with something like disappointment, a spike of worry and a speck of fear. The rest of the Team who had gone on the mission has dispersed – Robin, Batgirl, Kid Flash (and yes, she's proud of Bart, but calling him that, hearing him called that, leaves a sour taste on her teeth) – so it's only her, facing the only two brothers she has left, scowling at them with baggy eyes and an ashen face.

"This is a question of morality, not success," Kaldur tells her firmly. "If your moral compass is straying, for _any_ reason, it must be addressed for the good of the Team."

"What does the Team care?" Artemis barks. "They're _bad guys_, Kaldur. They tried to destroy our planet. They tried to kill us when we were _kids_." Her voice rises. "They took away—"

"I know what prices we have paid!" Kaldur interjects, and Artemis gasps in quietly, because she's never heard him speak so harshly. He recovers, shrinking back, bowing his head, and seems a hundred years older, a thousand tears heavier. "I know, Artemis. But vengeance is not a hero's game. Justice and retribution are not the same."

"I'm not avenging anything," Artemis snarls. "If you want to suspend me, fine. I don't need this Team to do what needs to be done."

Kaldur softens, almost breaks. "Artemis—"

"Kaldur, I grew up being on my own; I think I'd be just _fine_ trying it again," Artemis snaps. "In fact, you don't even have to say it; I'll do it for you – I'd like to take a break."

Kaldur opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly, Conner steps forward and grabs Artemis's wrist in a vice-grip (not a painful one), leading her away.

She squirms in his grasp but he does not yield, dragging her in a brisk stride down the hallway, past the sleeping quarters, past the showers, past the kitchen. She tries to fight her way out of it, wrestling and growling threats at him, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead, his free fist swinging at his side.

Finally, they stop outside of the training room. He yanks her in, though not roughly, and closes the door behind them. She trips slightly into the center of the room, throwing her arms out for balance.

She whirls on him, incensed. "What was _that_ fo—?"

"Hit me," Conner says, looking her in the eye and straightening.

Artemis blinks, her breath coming out in heated, even heaves. She uncurls her clenched fists and loosens slightly, her eyebrows furrowing, her stomach knotting.

"What?"

"Hit me," he repeats. There's a ferocious caring in the back of his eyes that frankly makes her insides jump. "As hard as you can. As many times as you can. Until you can't anymore. I can take it."

"Con..." Artemis breathes in deeply, still not breaking eye contact with him. "I don't – I don't understand."

"You need something more than a regular punching bag," he explains. "I know you do. Just hit me, Artemis. Punch me." He smiles just slightly, that patented Conner twitch of happiness so rare and genuine that it warms any heart. "Just not on the money-maker."

Artemis's shoulders roll down from their raised hackle-like position, and she immediately shifts her feet further apart into her usual stance. Conner throws his chest out, stares intently at her, and braces himself.

Artemis lunges. Her fist collides with full force against Conner's chest and he doesn't even twitch. She swings her other arm and hits him again, to the same reaction, and grits her teeth and repeats.

She beats into him, pounds at him, until her hair is stuck to her forehead and her mouth is dry and she's screaming aloud at nothing. She wrenches her eyes closed and attacks, blind, tempestuous, snarling and howling, crying just a little, and eventually her form falls to pieces and she's doing nothing more than slamming the sides of her fist against his chest, battering him, standing closer, doubling over, beating erratically against his shoulders and stomach; her arms burn and ache and feel like nothing, and eventually she slackens and drops her forehead onto Conner's collarbone and lets out dry heaves that could equate to sobs, and he lifts his burly, fearsome arms up and encircles her shoulders and holds her tightly against him, muffling her.

He pets her hair, rests his chin on top of her head, and doesn't move at all. Artemis cries into the fabric of his shirt and hits him again, weakly, aimlessly, clawing into the material when she's done and shaking with grief and fury.

"Please don't leave us," he tells her simply, his voice a low murmur. "I'm not going to lose you, too. Not again."

And she realizes that he, like everyone else who had grown up with her in a training simulation all those years ago, has lost her twice (and Wally, though he had known she was all right the second time, had lost her a hundred times in that mental prison, and he had roared and shaken the sky with misery).

She clings to Conner like a child and cries like a widow.

* * *

When she takes the zeta tube home, she can hear Wally take a breath, thousands and thousands of light years away.

The next morning, she hands Kaldur her leave of absence notice.


	3. Chapter 3

**OH my lord this chapter is regrettably quite awful but I have to get it out of the way, so I eked it out of myself and am presently covering my eyes with one hand while I click "post." Run.**

**Once again Libby has proven herself indispensable and awesome. **

* * *

"I guess I just don't get it," Zatanna says frankly, setting her glass of lemonade down hard on the surface of the restaurant table.

Artemis glances up sharply at the sound, which only makes Zatanna's shoulders slacken as she looks at her with pity and worry and a host of other things that Zatanna shouldn't be feeling. The summer breeze ripples over the striped awning above their heads and rustles at Artemis's hair, now cropped boyishly short (every extra inch had been one Wally's fingers wouldn't go through).

She squints a little against the sunlight, unused to the freshness of the air from being hunched over a laptop in her dreary apartment for so many days. After hearing about her leave of absence notice (and recent behavior) from M'gann, Zatanna had appeared outside Artemis's new apartment and threatened her with creative transfiguration if she didn't agree to emerge for lunch. She had also described the fact that she hadn't had to physically dig Artemis out as "miraculous," even by her standards.

"Get what?" Artemis asks plainly, shrugging and prodding at the ice cubes in her glass of water with her straw. "I just wasn't feeling it anymore."

Zatanna purses her lips as though she's just swallowed something sour and crosses her arms, leaning on the edge of the table. Her round white sunglasses catch the light, resting on her forehead.

"That's crap, Art," she says. Artemis glares swiftly at her and she shrugs. "I'm sorry, but it totally is. You don't need me to tell you that."

"Yeah, you're right, I don't," Artemis barks back. Using harsh words on Zatanna is a foreign practice, so it stings even her, but Zatanna hardly blinks. "What do you care, anyway?"

"Gosh, you'd think we're _friends_ or something!" Zatanna exclaims, throwing her hands in the air. "Come _on_; you not feeling it? You've always been the one who's felt it more than all of us combined. And with Dick included in that group? _Majorly_ saying something."

"Yeah, well, people change," Artemis mutters, going at the ice cubes with increased aggression.

"People don't go off the _deep_ end," Zatanna retorts.

Artemis chuckles without support. "I'm a great swimmer, you know."

"Lie!" Zatanna chirps. "Remember that time I came over and you almost drowned in the _bathtub_?"

Artemis does remember. A few months ago, she would have laughed, but now the memory is only darkening her mood.

"All of this joking is really appreciated; _thanks_," she snarls, flicking at the edge of the closed menu in front of her and scowling.

Zatanna straightens immediately, narrowing her eyes.

"You really have no right to be getting snippy with me," she says plainly.

"Why are you getting so mad?" Artemis demands, avoiding the remark. "I've just _outgrown_ them, Zee; it's not that hard to figure out."

"Crap again!" Zatanna sings with a flourish and a sarcastic roll of her eyes. "Going back to the Team was _good_ for you. You weren't alone, and—"

"That's what this is about?" Artemis scoffs. "You wanted to make sure I had someone _babysitting_ me? Why do you think I split?"

"You tell me!" Zatanna exclaims.

Artemis blows out a spiteful breath through her teeth and glares back at the ice cubes again.

"I just have some things I need to work out," she mumbles unhelpfully. "I was suffocating."

Zatanna sighs through her nose and puts her hands over her face, scrubbing it and running her fingers back through her hair. There's a stoniness in her expression that hadn't been there before. Artemis's stomach chills.

"Please don't do this, Artemis," Zatanna murmurs, looking her sharply in the eye.

"Do what?" Artemis glances away. "I'm not doing anything."

"Do _not_ lie to me," Zatanna says. Artemis, astonished, looks back up at her and is taken aback to discover that her eyes are red and wet. "I'm not stupid. You think I can't tell what you're doing? I went through it, Art. I'm _still_ going through it!"

"You don't—"

"Oh, yes, I do!" Zatanna practically shouts over her. Artemis stares at her. "Yes, I _do_. I spent _years_ after Fate took my father trying to find ways to get him back, and do you know where it got me? About six alternating weeks crying at Dick Grayson's house south of _nowhere_."

Artemis wants to say that it's different, and part of it is. Zatanna had been unused to losing people then, whereas Artemis had been doing it all her life. Zatanna had at least been able to look her father in the eye when she wanted to, but Artemis has nothing left, not enough for a grave or a handful of ash.

It's not a competition. She only feels worse for trying to make it into one. Her food sours in her stomach.

"I didn't sleep," Zatanna continues. Artemis has to try not to cringe. "I didn't eat. I didn't talk to anyone. It was missions and then back to chasing down Dr. Fate. I have to wear _glasses_ now because I did so much reading."

"You never wear them," Artemis interjects. It's the best she can do. Zatanna doesn't back down.

"No changing the subject," she scolds. "Please look at me."

Artemis flicks her eyes up to meet Zatanna's and has to put a very active effort into keeping them there. Zatanna, her black waves impeccable as always, her dark eyebrows furrowed together with intensity, gazes back at her for what feels like a long time – long enough for Artemis to notice, in a single blow, how much she's grown up since she'd first come to the Cave as an awkwardly-jointed but still wicked and witty girl who'd practically stolen Dick's attention right out of his head.

"I just – I know exactly what it's like," she whispers, reaching across the table to grasp Artemis's hand. Her pretty face is wrenched with old grief. "To give yourself up just – just on the chance that it'll bring them back. To drive yourself insane looking for ways to undo what happened, but... you _shouldn't_, Artemis."

"Shouldn't and can't aren't the same thing," Artemis murmurs, and slips her fingers out of Zatanna's. "And I know that with that _dazzling_ line, this probably isn't a good time to ask, but..."

"You need a favor," Zatanna finishes for her, drawing her hand back and putting it in her lap, glancing down unreadably.

"Yeah." Artemis turns her head to look out at the street, the cars rolling by in the bright summer air, the sky growing bluer every second. The season hurts, wrenches at everything inside of her.

Zatanna follows her line of sight in quiet, gazing with sadness and weariness and a wisdom that stands with poise. Not for the first time, Artemis feels like the younger of the two of them.

"There's – really nothing my magic can do," Zatanna says softly after a while, sounding pained. "Magic isn't supposed to be used for—"

"I know," Artemis cuts her off, swallowing. It does nothing to alleviate the dryness in her throat. "It's not _your_ magic I need."

Zatanna understands in an instant, her demeanor sobering. She sits up straight.

"You don't want him." Her voice is cold.

"I just need to ask him one question," Artemis tells her, finally tearing her eyes away from the safety of the city scenery and screwing up the courage to look at Zatanna straight. "Just tell me where he is."

"What makes you think I know?" Zatanna demands, folding her arms.

"You always do," Artemis whispers gently.

Zatanna's shoulders loosen and when she closes her eyes, her frown is pinched and harsh and it makes the bright air around them go infinitesimally gray.

* * *

She finds Doctor Fate in an out-of-the-way temple in Giza, one city away from where Zatanna had told her to look. She's heard from assorted locals that he's spent the better portion of the last week flying around Egypt, chasing down a strange boy with horns for hair and a cat. The sense of extreme foreboding does not last long in Artemis's presently one-track mind.

It's dusk, a treasured reprieve from the crackling white heat of the daylight. The sky above the city streets is deep blue, golden at the far edges closest to the earth, peppered with bountiful stars.

Artemis traipses through the temple entrance and pulls her scarf over her head and Fate is right there, standing against a far wall with his back to her. She brushes the sand from her ears and elbow joints and halts in the center of the floor. There is no one else there but the two of them.

Seeing the helmet causes a flash in the base of her skull, vague memories of seeing it on a shelf, dusted and polished every day, stared at extensively by two pensive green eyes. She shakes it out.

"Fate," she greets him shortly, her hand brushing against the crossbow strapped to her thigh under her pants. "I've been looking for you."

Fate doesn't give a start or even a twitch and Artemis isn't even sure that he knows that she's there until she hears him sigh. He doesn't turn to face her, but tilts his head back, gazing at the illustrations on the wall with further focus.

"You have come a long way to find me, child," he says, his reverberations deep and echoing in every crevice.

Artemis could laugh. Fate's designation of her and the rest of the Team as children had gotten on their nerves once upon a time, but now there's a small part of her that cherishes it.

"Yeah, well, that's your fault for being a long way away," Artemis retorts. She's never been intimidated by Fate, not even as a fifteen-year-old who'd seen him possess her friends, and that holds even more true now that she's faced things much more horrific than a Lord of Order.

"You require something of me." Fate finally pivots around to face her, and Artemis stares into Giovanni Zatara's empty eyes, unchilled.

"Yes," she replies as firmly as she can. "Well – request, actually."

"How uncharacteristically courteous." She can hear the sneer in his voice, which makes her eyes narrow. "I must remind you, however, that Fate does not exist to bend to the whim of mortals."

"Right. Fate just exists to go on power trips and make a lot of puns with his name in them," Artemis snarks out before she can stop herself. "Can you help me or not, Nabu?"

"So you address me by my true name, do you?" Fate straightens, folding his arms. "You act with great petulance for one who requests the assistance of a Lord of Order."

Artemis tightens her fists and grits her teeth. She really should have known that any conversation with Fate would inevitably need to be precluded by a lot of palaver, but she's even less in the mood for it than she normally would be.

"I'm sorry," she grinds out mulishly. "Forgive me. There's just something that I need to ask you."

"Then ask and be done," Fate retorts with tautness. "I have many other duties to which I ought to be attending, child, and I—"

"You remember Wally, right?" she cuts in sharply, yanking the words out of herself in one blow.

Fate, astonishingly, falls silent, surveying her with calculation. His head tilts and the helmet glints even in the dim light of the candles.

"I do," he finally answers, with blatant caution.

"You've – heard about what happened to him, I'm guessing," Artemis continues, the words like cyanide in her mouth. It's the first time she's really addressed it, said it out loud, had to convey it in something besides red and tear-strained eyes or unlabeled boxes of clothes and personal effects. She's never had to be the one to break the news to anyone, not even his parents; they, to Artemis's deeply buried relief, had just _known_, the same way Iris had before she'd started crying too violently to stand.

"I have," Fate replies. His voice rumbles with solemnity.

That same lump that had sunk to her knees when she'd heard the cell phone's error message is back again, now ensconced in her throat. It's difficult to swallow, so she settles for continuing to talk.

"I just – I need to know," she whispers, more brokenly than she'd wanted to. She clears her throat, trying to bring some foundation back into her voice. "There's a... a possibility that he's not – I mean, that he—"

"Why can you not say it?" Fate demands.

Artemis bristles.

"That he's not dead," she finally spits out. Fate's shoulders tighten, infinitesimally, at the fierce echo of her voice. "I know that you would – that you would know for _sure_, if he was. So I'm here to ask you..."

"You wish for me to instill false hopes in your mind?" Fate interjects, his powerful tones louder than they had been before. "You wish for me to utilize my power in order to alleviate your pain, only your pain, or to exacerbate it? This is foolish. You are a fool."

"Maybe," Artemis agrees, tilting her head. "Just tell me. That's all I ask, Nabu. Nothing else. It's a pretty good deal."

"It is only a deal if I receive something in return."

"Anything you want," Artemis says instantly, and she means it. Fate seems to understand.

"No. I require nothing of you." He closes his eyes and bows his head. "My cognizance is not to be used for such selfish reasons as this. But Kent Nelson has made a benevolent fool of me, and Wallace West has sworn himself to Fate on... more than one occasion." He lifts his chin again, staring at Artemis in the eye with a glare that she can distinguish even with the helmet in the way. "Do not grow accustomed to this charity, Artemis Crock."

"Trust me, I won't," Artemis assures him cynically.

"If he is truly accessible, I can do nothing to retrieve him," Fate continues. "You should expect no further assistance than the confirmation you have requested; it is not the duty of Fate to—"

"I don't," Artemis says. Fate glances up at her interruption, looking tetchy, but she does not balk.

"I must meditate," he finally tells her, and, without further explanation, he crosses his legs and levitates over the floor, closing his eyes.

Artemis waits. She stands with her back straight and her fists at her sides, never taking her attention off of him. His cape billows slightly around him, and after a few minutes, his eyes snap open, glowing gold. She stiffens, but makes no attempt to interrupt him.

Another ten minutes pass, perhaps more. Artemis's focus does not stray for a second of it. Eventually, Fate closes his eyes again, and his cape drops limply toward the floor, and he slowly unfolds his legs again, standing with poise as though he hadn't moved at all.

He lifts his chin and meets her eye. Artemis can't decipher the expression in the blackness of his pupils, but something about the uncertainty throws her mind off-balance, and it wobbles unpleasantly.

"He lives," Fate intones.

Artemis's legs would give out on her if not for the hesitancy in his voice. Rather than elation, she feels dread.

"But?" she prompts immediately, leaning forward slightly and refusing to blink.

Fate's eyes narrow. "Wallace West's present state can either provide hope, or eradicate all traces of it. He has not died. But he has ceased. He is no longer present on this plane. He does not exist."

"I don't understand," Artemis whispers. Any hope of volume that her voice had held is now gone.

"In corporeal death, there is a greater chance of resurrection," Fate explains darkly. "But no trace of him remains on the physical plane. He cannot be touched, seen, felt, or sensed. He is more gone than any corpse would leave him, and for that I pity you.."

"Me?" Artemis says almost defensively. "Why me?"

Fate crosses his arms over his chest and finally has the decency to look away from her. She suspects it's thanks to Zatara, somewhere in the far, deep confines of the Helmet.

"Drawing him back to this plane again cannot be done," he replies. Artemis's eyes burn with knee-jerk denial. "Not even my magic can retrieve him."

Artemis can conjure up little response, so she stands before Fate in silence, her eyes focused emptily on the floor. Fate seems to consider her, tightening his grip on his own arms before sighing through his nose and stepping forward.

"I am sorry," he says, and Artemis's face contorts – she hates liars. "There is one further... _favor_ I may offer to you."

"Perfect," Artemis deadpans.

"Such ingratitude is detrimental to you, Artemis Crock," Fate admonishes her, sounding on the brink of a greater burst of displeasure. "I am offering you the opportunity to contact him."

Artemis jolts to attention.

"I thought you said he couldn't be—" she starts to croak, but Fate shakes his head and she falls quiet.

"He cannot," he assures her. "But as a Lord of Order who has once possessed his form, traded souls with him, I am able to channel that same soul, if need be. Provided that it is intact, I can access it."

"So you—" Artemis swallows, her eyebrows twitching closer together. "You can... bring him here?"

"No," Fate replies shortly. "But I may act as a vessel through which he may speak. Only this once, child. Never again."

Artemis is already nodding, feverish and nearly blind, her palms clammy, her mouth dry. Fate hums deep in his throat with pensiveness, self-disbelief, before taking a step back again, curling his fingers into fists, and speaking.

The words echo in every crevice, every dark corner, in a thousand voices Artemis does not recognize, in a language she cannot understand. Fate's body glows gold at the edges, a fearsome aura that illuminates the previously dim temple, and Artemis's heart hammers ferociously against her sternum, a frantic drumming beat that makes her head feel light.

Fate's incantation ends, and his eyes start to brighten with the same gold light that they had before, and there is a breeze in the walls now, rustling Artemis's hair and bones and breath.

Then, out of the darkness, out of the dust and the rubble and Giza's indigo night sky, out of the stars, out of the wind, she hears him. It's as indistinct and varying in clarity as it had been in the zeta beams, and it sounds so far away even though it's no more distant than half a floor away, and it crackles and burns out like radio static, but she still knows it. She knows it so well her elbows start to tingle.

"Ar—mis—so fast in—tired—I'm s—tired—_babe_—Mom and—_scared_..."

"Wally?" she rasps, reaching a hand out in spite of herself.

At the sound of his name, his voice seems to become clearer, more concentrated.

"I'm _really_ scared—ight now." It sounds uncanny coming from Fate, but it's stripped down to only Wally's voice, only Wally's fear, rushing by at thousands of miles per hour. "Can't—come home—'m lost—"

"We're gonna find you, Wally; I promise," Artemis chokes out, not even thinking on the words. "And then I'm going to _kill_ you; I—" Her cheeks are wet and her teeth are tight. "God, I _swear_."

"Knew it," he echoes back. "You—impossible—tell Dick I'm—..."

Before he can finish, the breeze has abruptly ceased, and the echoes have all come to a halt, and Fate is suddenly leaning on the wall for support with one hand, doubled slightly over.

Artemis is utterly frozen.

"He is moving at too great a speed for my powers to isolate him," Fate grinds out, finally straightening. His empty eyes look to Artemis's again, but hers are wide and staring at nothing, her hand still outstretched. "I am sorry."

It only takes Artemis another two seconds to harden her face, to drop her hands to her sides, and to swiftly turn and depart from the temple as though she'd never been there at all. Fate does not call after her, and no one stops her in the streets, but she wouldn't notice them anyway, she supposes – her spine is still twinging with every recollected syllable, every crippling intonation, of the man whose parents had held her and told her that she should have the ring in his underwear drawer, the man whose best friend has vanished with grief, the man whose photograph she had left shattered and wind-torn on a Palo Alto sidewalk.

She knows that she shouldn't let herself believe any of this. She knows that it will be even unhealthier than losing sleep and meals and concentration and virtue of purpose, falling headfirst into a pit, the bottom of which she cannot see, but must assume will not be the grave of the freckle-faced boy who had taught her how to feel so fiercely that she can no longer afford to be who she used to.

She stumbles to an ungraceful stop in the middle of the street, too bewildered to even remember how to walk properly. People shoulder by her and mutter mulishly and she stares at the ground, confronted with something even more terrifying than the fact that Wally is not gone:

She has no idea, none at all, of how to bring him back.


	4. Chapter 4

**A LOT GOES ON IN HERE; I hope that****'****s okay! And I hope it****'****s not tedious and lame and all those other things that I****'****m always terrified of my writing being, ahaha. There's just some stuff I've gotta toss in here to set the home stretch into motion (and this isn't, technically, the home stretch; it's more like the _actual_ beginning of the whole "fixing" part). Stop me before I get more cryptic.**

**Libby is the best, and so is Emma, and so is Cat! Three bests for the price of one! **

**See you next time! Thank you all, again, for all of the great and helpful reviews you're leaving; it all means a lot. **

* * *

"_Favorite movie?" Kid Flash asked, his green eyes bright behind the red lenses of his goggles. His skinny legs kick rhythmically over the edge of the rooftop, yellow boots nudging light into the night._

_It was summer in Central City. He and Robin had only really known each other for a couple of months, but already they were thick as a lawful version of thieves, as Flash said, and already they had taken to spending their nights chattering on the highest rooftops they could access – a world which was, thanks to Robin's prodigious hacking and lockpicking skills, their considerably large oyster._

"_Loaded question!" Robin replied immediately, throwing gloved hands in the air. "I can't pick just _one_, dude; it would hurt all the other movies' feelings."_

"_Mine's Back to the Future," Kid Flash told him, beaming through his freckles and braces. "The time travel stuff is totally bogus, but it's still awesome."_

"_I thought you hated time travel." Robin snorted as he bit into one of the donuts from the paper bag between them._

_Kid Flash nodded. "I do."_

"_What for?"_

"_Well, it's like—" Kid Flash huffed through his nose, his shoulders dropping as he stared in thought at the starless sky. Seriousness had never been his forte. "Things just happen the way they happen. Changing them is cheating. Brave people are the ones who accept whatever happens to them, you know?"_

"_Brave people," Robin muttered, his amused demeanor falling away. The summer breeze grazed his hair and his cape and Kid Flash glanced over at him, perplexed, pushing his goggles onto his forehead._

"_Rob, what's a'matter?" he asked quietly, sensing the shift in mood. He sounded instantly repentant. _

_Robin breathed in slowly, his eyelids going low behind the black mask._

"_How good are you at keeping secrets?" he finally muttered, fiddling with his fingers in his lap and furtively chewing his lip._

_Kid Flash waggled his eyebrows. "How good are you at telling them?" _

_Robin rolled his eyes and shoved into Kid Flash's shoulder, eliciting a snigger from the older boy. The city traffic rolled beneath their feet, gold flecks of light on seemingly endless streets, trailing along like fish in a river. The sound of trains and traffic rustled in with the empty night noise, and an airplane rumbled by over them, its red lights blinking through the deep city smog. They tilted their heads back in unison to watch it._

"_Where d'you think it's going?" Kid Flash asked, leaning back on his hands. "I always wonder where those things are going. Somewhere really cool, like the Amazon."_

"_Ew, too many bugs." Robin cocked his chin. "France."_

"_Ew, too many baguettes," Kid Flash laughed, and then his stomach gurgled. "No. Never too many baguettes."_

_He shifted, fidgety at the stillness._

"_You were gonna let me in on a secret?" he finally blurted out, feigning jocularity to lighten the question. Robin's muscles tightened, but not enough for Kid Flash to notice – his eyes were focused, always, on the stars, on the boundless roads beyond them._

"_Yeah," Robin said. His voice was diminutive and careful, but steady. "But you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Like, you're the only person I'm gonna tell and I'm not even allowed to tell you and if you spread it around I'll kill you in a very creative way, like by stapling your thumbs into your eye sockets and pulling out your vocal cords and tying them like an ascot around your—"_

"_Okay, I actually don't want to hear it," Kid Flash interjected, clapping his hands over his ears immediately. He squeezed his eyes shut, disrupting his heavy freckles, loudly chanting, "LALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOUR SECRETS; LALALA!"_

"_Dude!" Robin scoffed, shoving at him again until he toppled over sideways with an offended noise. He shook his head, giggling, and crossed his arms. "This is serious. I'm about to impart crucial intel onto you and the best you can do is sing over it? Out of tune, by the way."_

_Kid Flash shook his head as he sprung back up, looking histrionically dejected._

"_Man, for a best pal, you're a real dick, y'know?" he retorted with a protruding lower lip._

_At that, Robin exploded into a fit of chortles, stuffing his fist over his mouth in an attempt to muffle them, to no avail. Kid Flash blinked at him with reddening ears, looking bewildered, eventually starting to frown affrontedly._

"_What?" he demanded._

_Robin took a shaky breath and seemed to compose himself again, fanning at his own face and still periodically cackling. Kid Flash scowled at him, but waited._

"_Okay, okay," Robin finally gasped out. "Yeah, you got me. I'm a real Richard."_

_It took a moment for Kid Flash to catch it, but the expression that suddenly widened over his face was worth the pause. His mouth popped ajar and he started gesticulating wildly at nothing, practically flailing, his eyes growing protuberant, and Robin just beamed at him._

"_You're a real what?" Kid Flash finally sputtered._

_Robin blew out a breath of amusement and slowly reached up to his face, his index finger and thumb hooking around the edge of the domino mask and carefully peeling it off. Kid Flash watched in amazement as the younger boy looked him straight in the eye with unexpectedly blue eyes._

"_Richard Grayson," Robin told him in a quiet voice. His smile was lopsided. "My name's Dick."_

_Kid Flash gawked at him, miraculously speechless (a reaction Robin ought to be patting himself on the back for), for a good few minutes. Robin did not lose his pleased grin, and after a long, long while, Kid Flash shook his head and started to smile and sit up straighter, his cheeks welcoming the expression as though it belonged there more than any other tilt of mouth in the world._

"_I'm sticking to Rob," he said._

"_What?" Robin exclaimed, pretending to be wounded. "What for?"_

_Kid Flash, apparently taking him seriously, shrugged easily and fell on his back on the roof of Wayne Manor, beaming up at the empty sky with his hands behind his head._

"_Because that's who you are," he said. "And it always will be."_

"_What if I change my alias?" Robin demanded, giggling._

"_You'd better not."_

"_Well, okay, but what if someday we aren't friends anymore?" Robin added, before he could stop himself._

_Kid Flash's smile faded instantly, replaced by a look of utter solemness that shocked Robin. He turned his head to look Robin in the eye, severe and earnest and such a jarring difference from his usual facetiousness, and frowned._

"_We'd better not," he said, fiercely._

_Robin had to blink back at him for a few moments, stunned, before collecting himself enough to reach for the last donut. As soon as his attention slipped, Kid Flash's eyes strayed back to the smog._

"_We won't, dear," Robin boy finally joked blithely. Kid Flash didn't laugh, but Robin felt a hand pat his shoulder, just for a second, just as another zenith fumbled down from the sky above them._

* * *

Artemis makes her journey back from Egypt as though wading through a particularly thick and remarkable dream. The most her mind manages to salvage from it is the sight of a thousand golden city lights twinkling far beneath the airplane, scattering like particles of dust, like smoke. She doesn't look away from them for the entire flight, not even when they've disappeared in favor of the black expansion of an ocean.

She's fairly sure that her hands shake the whole time, because someone at the luggage carousel asks her if she's all right when she nearly drops her suitcase, and the flight attendant has to hold her glass of ginger ale steady for her as he lowers it onto her tray. She strides out of the airport with her eyes on the ground in front of her, running on sleeplessness and a sort of muffled adrenaline, and her heart hammers and her stomach roils and boils and her teeth clench together with no immediate hope of parting, and she plays the radio loud when she drives on the freeway, unable to stand the thought of any further silence that will accommodate the remaining echoes of Wally's garbled, terrified words.

Her hands burn on the steering wheel for still-present want of reaching out and touching him, wherever he is, just closing her fingers around a wrist and plucking him from oblivion as though it's as easy as pulling a hair from her head. And her vision is stormy with memories of a wiry, freckled body; naked ankles and an unrestrained guffaw that would make her heart buoyant; the smell of burned popcorn and summer lawns, starlight on an open road, cotton, thunderstorms, steady breathing. She has to grip the edges of the wheel until her knuckles turn white to keep her palms from searing themselves with their own emptiness.

She pulls over, clumsily, and several people honk at her before whizzing by. Her car crunches into the gravel on the side of the freeway and she drops her head onto the top of the steering wheel, practically hyperventilating, and not from excitement, nor from elation, but from sheer terror, because knowing that Wally is out there, knowing that he is afraid, and that she can't reach him, is worse by far than any scrap of proof that he was dead.

The word throbs in her skull like an agitated bruise: _dead_, everything inside of her heaves, in and out, breath by breath. She violently switches the radio off with a shallow gasp.

She breathes in deeply and sits up, flattening her back against the seat. She steels her eyes ahead, still clutching the wheel.

_Focus_. She hears her father's voice in her head immediately, but does nothing to shove it out as she so often does. _Steady, baby girl, steady. Pay attention. You gotta keep your head or you might miss something, and then I'll be digging you a grave. Recap, kid. Fast. Where are you? What do you know? And how do you win? Think fast. This is a test._

The memory dredges up no spite. She pulls in another breath, which wobbles significantly less than the last, keeping her gaze focused and even. Evaluation:

Wally is alive, but there's virtually no way to reach him, because he doesn't exist. He's probably on another plane, or another dimension. A plane that can be barely accessed under specific (unknown) conditions by zeta tube. He's moving fast – too fast to be pinned down even by a Lord of Order. He's still, but still moving. He's scared. And if she tells any of this to anyone – _anyone_ – they'll look at her with that saccharine pity in their unaffected eyes and pass her a straightjacket.

_Okay, breathe_. Unscramble the pieces: high speed, other plane, zeta tubes. _Empty bed, spoiled food, broken picture frame._ Sixteen seconds, chrysalis energy, cease. _Red eyelashes, even teeth, freckled elbows._

She wrenches her eyes shut, doubles forward, and screams.

She's not sure what for. She just knows that she needs it. Rage and grief and frustration and loneliness burst out of her and she screams, red-faced, inconsolable, until everything in her is scraped raw and she can make no sound at all.

When she's finished, when the last of the shambolic emotions that have dragged her to the ground for the past five months have been scrubbed out of her, when the scared and emphatic girl of sixteen, of twenty, has been carried away to distant sands by a pair of arms she can barely imagine anymore, she goes silent, panting, and slackens her grasp on the steering wheel.

Finally, when she straightens, it's Tigress's face she wears. It is unfaltering, unfeeling, and glacial. The gray November sky, bleak and endless, feels like home to it, to her. She lifts her foot off of the brake, slips a hand onto the gear shift to put it back into drive, and merges onto the freeway again.

No music plays as the season-paled world goes by. She inhales and exhales through her nose, watchful of enemies and of threats, and of guilt.

This isn't personal anymore, she's decided. This is business only. If it's business, she's given absolutely no chances for failure, and those are the only stakes she feels lucky enough to clamber onto anymore.

Artemis would cry. Artemis would be frantic and fumbling in the dark, and Artemis would hold herself back, and Artemis would lose, crumpling to the floor, like a stupid little girl.

But Tigress always wins.

* * *

It's night when she traipses up the last flight of stairs to the apartment, suitcase in tow, keys hanging in one limp hand. She wriggles the lock open after a moment of effort and nudges the door ajar, swinging in her suitcase and dropping it to the floor with an entirely uncourteous _thud_. Almost immediately, she hears a broom hitting the ceiling – her floor; whatever – from the room downstairs.

She stomps once for good measure and closes the door behind her.

All of the lights are off inside. The city traffic is quiet through the thin glass of the window.

As soon as she steps in, she hears shuffling and panting and the jingling of a collar, and then Brucely collides with her shins, stumbling all over her, standing up to clumsily but joyfully lick at her chin. She lets out the smallest of smiles and crouches down to greet him, cooing at him, scratching at the skin behind his flopping ears. The sensation makes his leg and tail thump against the hardwood floor and he licks her again, whining inquisitively, sniffing noisily at the new scents in her hair and on her clothes.

"Buddy, you smell _terrible_," she tells him frankly, in a gentle voice she hasn't used on anything else since curling up with Wally on the night of June 19.

He woofs softly, jowls flapping, and hops up so that his paws are on each of her knees. She rubs the top of his head before straightening, and he slips off, pacing around her ankles, gazing up at her and blinking rapidly, his tongue askew.

She laughs barely through her nose and flicks the light switch on, looks up, and immediately, instinctively, whips out her crossbow.

Brucely whines, backing away from the weapon and hiding behind her legs, but it's not him she's aiming at with wild, deadly eyes.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa!" Bart exclaims, his hands raised, his face drained of color. "It's all fun and games until a minor loses an eye! I swear I come in peace; I swear!"

"Bart?" It comes out through gritted teeth and her arm jerkily lowers. "What the – how did you get in here?"

"Haha, funny story there," Bart replies, loosening enough to rub the back of his neck awkwardly (the action is familiar, so familiar that it makes her tongue feel swollen and sour). "So, y'know how you gave your keys to Zatanna so she'd feed your dog while you were on your super secret quest? Turns out she gave 'em to me. So I could be here when you got back. But I had no idea when _that'd_ be so I've actually been asleep on your couch for like three hours – smells funny, by the way, and not in a Chicken Whizee kinda fashion – but anyway yeah, charming pooch you've got, _as_ I remember, and the new place is, uh..."

He trails off, glancing around at the dark walls with skepticism.

"...Unique," he finishes tactfully. "Please don't kill me."

Artemis's eyes shoot up to his forehead, upon which a pair of well-known red goggles is perched among the auburn hair. She wants to shout at him for wearing them at any time that isn't absolutely required by uniform, but she knows it's not her right.

"Sit down," she orders, and he immediately obeys, plopping his tiny frame onto the absolute edge of one of the couch cushions.

She doesn't say anything more, putting away her crossbow and turning to move her suitcase to a more appropriate location. Brucely trails after her every move, tail wagging, intermittently glancing at Bart whenever they pass, and Bart, to his credit, sits absolutely still.

She puts her suitcase at the foot of her bed in her bedroom at the end of the hall, sheds her coat, walks into the kitchen to make tea, and doesn't look at Bart because, at this point, it's too much work to stay calm seeing him, too much work not to break down every time his smile echoes the one she can't see anymore.

"Artemis?" he finally calls, cracking under the silence. _Ha_.

"What?" she replies brusquely, hands busying themselves with pulling out teabags and mugs.

"Where'd you go?" he asks.

"Around," she answers, right off the bat. "Nowhere special. None of your business."

"Yeesh, ow," Bart jokes lamely. "You sure it wasn't Disneyland? Heh."

"Bart, I'm gonna ask you again," she grinds out, finally slamming her hands onto the kitchen counter to give them a place to stay so that they don't start to pull her own hair out of her head. "And you're gonna answer me straight this time. _What are you doing here_?"

He seems to consider lying, because there's a silence – or maybe he's just too petrified by the harshness in her voice to bring himself to respond.

"I'm worried about you," he blurts out. "I mean, everyone is, but—_Artemis_, you shouldn't be going this alone, you know? That's what you've got _us_ for. And I don't want you to hate me just because I'm wearing his suit because I don't like it either; I _hate_ it, I hate getting what I wanted in the worst possible way, and I hate not having him here I hate not seeing him or talking to him I barely got to know him I hate all of it Artemis and I just want you to be—he wouldn't want you to be like this."

Artemis freezes.

"Excuse me?" she asks, in a low and dangerous voice.

Bart gulps audibly, but doesn't eschew.

"He wouldn't want this," he repeats, a bit more strongly and slowly. "He only ever wanted people to be _happy_, and—"

"Bart," Artemis cuts in sharply, finally whirling on him, one finger pointing at him like an arrow to his heart. He stiffens under her gaze, his green eyes wide and even a little scared. "You can wear his suit. You can take his name. But you _never_ speak for him; do you understand? You don't know what he wanted, or what he thought, and you sure as hell don't know what he _would_ want, _or_ think. And I am going to be as broken and screwed-up as I want to be, and if you try using _him_ to tell me how to feel ever again, you're _done_."

Her voice drops in temperature until it's practically freezing. "Clear?"

She's expecting Bart's face to harden, or at the very least she's expecting his eyes to well over, expecting him to storm out, expecting him to shout out some kind of rebuttal. But he doesn't.

She stands and watches as, before her eyes, something in his demeanor seems to crumble. His shoulders drop and his arms go limp and his head hangs, and his green eyes screw closed in pain as though she's just impaled him.

"I'm sorry." The words come out in a tiny, broken voice like none she's ever heard, much less from the happy-go-lucky speed-chatterer whose greatest concern has always seemed to be the level of food – it's damaged, and scarred at every edge, and _small_, so small she could pick it up and hold it in her hands.

As she loosens, he starts to cry.

He wipes his nose with one sleeve, but it does nothing to lessen the tears swelling down his cheeks. And she realizes that he, like her, has very little color in him, and the edges of his eyes are dark and puffy, and his posture is exhausted. The sound of his hiccups and sobs, young and helpless and unfettered, fills up the empty space in her gloomy apartment, and he's still saying that he's sorry, over and over, furiously pawing at his eyes to try to rid himself of the tears that refuse to stop.

Artemis pulls away from the counter and reaches him in two strides, and she hunkers down to his height and sweeps him into her arms, tugging him to her chest so that his chin bumps into her shoulder. He grabs her immediately, his fingers finding the material of her sweater and clinging to it, and cries horrendously into her, the kind of unrestrained, pitiful wails that can only really come from someone so young. _Great_. She made a kid cry.

"I'm so sorry, Artemis," he whimpers. "I don't know what to do; I'm sorry."

She hushes him, rubbing circles onto his back and staring blankly out the window in front of her. There's a part of her that's cherishing this, as useless as she is, because it's the first time in nearly five months that Bart hasn't treated her like a time bomb.

"I just want you to be okay," he blurts out, half-yells it, really, but it's wet and forlorn and so vehement that it almost knocks her backward.

She doesn't know what to tell him, because she's not sure if she ever will be, so she just hugs him tighter. Brucely pads over to sit beside them, hesitantly licking at Bart's cheeks, and when Bart breaks out a smile through the anguish and the confusion and laughs a little, Artemis knows it's not thanks to her at all.

"Artemis..." Bart sniffles noisily, rubbing at one red eye and breathing out heavily. "We all just... want you to be okay." He finally looks up from Brucely, meeting her eyes with his still-damp, rosy-edged ones, imploring. "You can do this; we all know you can; just... don't try to go it alone, okay? That's dumb."

Artemis frowns warningly at him and he cracks a smile, letting out a sheepish chuckle.

"No offense," he appends.

"Yeah, okay," she says, getting to her feet and starting to walk back to the kitchen now that the pot is whistling. The words are empty and dismissive. "So do Jay and Joan know you're out this late?"

"Well, uh, technically, the thing about that is—" He blinks protuberantly at her when she glares at him over her shoulder. "No?"

"Ugh." She drops her head back and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Closest zeta tube's two blocks. Look, Bart, it's been a long day and I'm tired and—"

"Got it, grandma, I'm gone," Bart assures her, and in a second he's zipped to the door, but not before he's halted fleetingly next to her and pecked her cheek. "You're gonna be fine, okay?"

"Just get—" she starts to say, but it's to an empty apartment, and a barely open door, and a puff of air that rustles the papers on the table and blows her hair back over her forehead.

She hates the sensation.

* * *

November blusters to a close, its wind rattling the windows and causing the red trees to dance and howl. Artemis stays indoors for most of it, because breezes have sort of lost their appeal, if she's being honest with herself; she spends her afternoons curled up on the couch with Brucely on her feet and her laptop on her knees, reading article after article of the League's archival files on zeta teleportation. (Dick had given her the access code to the League's entire database a long time ago, just because he thought it would be funny.)

She discovers, to her admitted surprise, that zeta tubes are one of the League's most untapped assets, in that they know very little about them, and barely even know how they work. The Martian Manhunter had arrived on Earth due to a zeta tube accident, but zeta tubes seem to work more efficiently across short distances, preferably restricted to one planet. In recent years, they had advanced enough to access planets like Rann and Mars, thanks to the work of a scientist by the name of Dr. Adam Strange.

His name pops up on more than one occasion, so Artemis scans several bits of information about Strange, even reads up on a few of his published theories about zeta beam technology and capabilities.

"With further advancement," one article reads, "it is not out of the realm of possibility at all to predict that, soon, zeta beams will be able to take us to other worlds, other dimensions, or even other times. Studies are presently underway to examine the relation between zeta radiation and chronotron radiation, and within fifty years' time, I predict the human race will have its first successful attempt at time travel."

She narrows her eyes at a lot of it – the League's apparently been funding this guy for close to two years, so he has to have some kind of legitimacy, even if what he's talking about is completely insane. And he's _young _– maybe only a few years older than she is – and he's got the sort of innocent blond-hair-blue-eyes combo that immediately makes her think of a daytime soap star, or something, like maybe a hot doctor on a dramatic medical show about romance and pregnancy scares and also a little bit of medicine, somewhere.

She takes notes on everything, though; she saves everything potentially useful to her hard drive and lives on a lot of pho and order-in chicken tenders from the fast food place a block over. No longer the moping mourner without the motivation to eat, she consumes junk at a voracious pace to keep herself awake, and one night she catches herself drinking coffee out of the pot. She calls no one, talks to no one, no matter how many times her cell phone rings, no matter how many knocks she hears at the door; and, to everyone's credit, they don't call her out on obviously being there, but leave her alone, dejected and hesitant but still considerate enough.

She doesn't even care that she's probably losing her mind. It feels nice, like falling down a rabbit hole and knowing exactly what she's in for at the bottom.

* * *

It's half past midnight on the first day of December when the knock sounds at her door.

She glances up from the laptop, and Brucely stretches at the movement, losing his balance and rolling off the couch. She stares almost threateningly at the door, daring whoever's on the other side of it to try knocking again.

Technically, they don't.

"'Mis," a ragged remnant of a familiar voice coos. Her shoulders rise like hackles and her nostrils flare. "You in a laughing mood?"

In an instant, she's on her feet, storming to the door and wrenching it open, and there are already tears in her eyes, wrathful ones, ones that burn at everything inside of her.

Dick is standing there, battered and dirty, smiling as crookedly as he did the first day she met him.

He looks awful. His typically impeccable hair is oily and bedraggled; there are bags under his eyes of a dark mauve color, harsh against the paleness of his complexion; even the blue irises, typically so lifelike, are dull and icy.

He leans against the door frame, or rather sags – his breathing is shallow and slow, and it whistles in his chest in a way that is definitely not healthy.

He lifts his head up and gives her a crooked, unstable smile. It feels like being punched hard in the stomach without bracing herself.

"And where've _you_ been?" she demands coldly.

"You're not gonna invite me in?" He laughs, but it's a twisted corruption of the airy giggle she'd known so well as a teenager. "How gauche."

Rather than responding, she grabs his jacket collar in one fist and hauls him inside, slamming the door closed with her free hand. It cracks the quiet in half, but he doesn't protest at being manhandled so unforgivingly.

"Quite a grip you've got there," he comments blithely.

"Shut up and sit down," she orders, steering him roughly to the couch. "I'm gonna make tea."

He topples over, collapsing onto it, a mess of leather and limbs, knocking into her standing lamp and making it wobble.

"Oh," he says. "Good; I'll take—"

"You don't get any," she snarls. She wields her voice like a weapon and it cuts his off at its throat.

He throws his hands up in defeat and she whirls away, storming into the cramped kitchen and furiously amping up the heat on the rickety, rusted gas stove to 10. The starting-up snaps of the gas prick at the air like a needle three times before she ignites the flame.

"Where have you _been_, Dick?" she demands over her shoulder.

There's a pause, and then he replies: "Before I answer that question, I need to know if you're referring to my name or the insult."

She stares flatly at him over her shoulder from the kitchen and, in response, he huffs out a snicker and splays backwards on the couch, prone across it, scrubbing his hands over his face.

"O, beautiful lady, you wound me," he laments. "I thought we'd gotten _past_ this. Can I get a waiver out of this friendship?"

"Dick," Artemis murmurs, and he quiets. Her eyes wander back to the wall in front of her, and then down to the flames of the stove. "I'm not in the mood for your joking or your crap anymore. So either you man up, or I'm throwing you out.

He doesn't reply.

"I don't care how long it's been," she continues. "I don't care if it's your birthday. I'm done with these stupid games you're always playing."

"You remembered," he mutters softly, and she glances up.

"Yeah," she retorts. "Yeah, I remembered. How old are you now, even? Twelve?"

He snorts, but it's weak and halfhearted. "Twenty."

Artemis shakes her head, takes out a second mug from the cabinet without even thinking on it.

"Idiot," she whispers.

"Come here," he says. She can tell it's supposed to sound like an order, but she knows it's nothing more than a request, practically a plea.

She sends one more attentive look to the kettle before sidling back into the living room and sitting hesitantly on the couch. Dick lifts his limber legs away to make room for her, and she presses her hip against the end of the armrest, leaning as far away from him as possible.

"Where were you?" she asks emptily, staring at the floor, her hands folded in her lap.

Dick doesn't answer right away. She knows that if she turns her head, she'll see him gazing at a spot of light on the dim floor with the beaten-down, broken dejection of a child who watched his parents die that he only lets onto his face when he thinks no one's watching. But she doesn't look. He doesn't deserve it.

"You could've... I dunno, left a note or something," she continues harshly. "Like maybe a, 'Oh, hey, sorry for running away from my friends and responsibilities after my best friend died.' Thanks for showing up for the service, by the way."

Dick winces noticeably with every word, but offers no response.

"Really great time to be joking," she finishes under her breath, reaching a shaking hand up to massage her temple. "You're a stand-up guy, Grayson."

"Breaking out the last names, huh?" Dick mumbles. She can hear the wan smile in his voice. "What's next; you gonna call me a cretin?"

"Just—" Artemis barks the first word out, but cuts herself off, quieting her voice. Her face is starting to heat up with outrage. "Just... _explain_ yourself. Please. There's nothing else you can say that'll interest me."

Dick sighs and sits up. The leather of his jacket squeaks with the movement. He slouches forward, resting his arms loosely on his knees and linking his hands together, exhaling slowly and heavily through his nose.

"Sorry for not going to the... memorial thing," he mutters, and runs a hand over his face, pulling at the skin. "And for bailing. It's just—" He trails off. "Knowing why isn't gonna make you hate me any less."

"Doubtful," she agrees. "But not knowing why is gonna make me hate you more."

"Touché," he concedes. She finally looks over at him to see that his head is hanging, his eyes obscured by his bangs. He needs a haircut more than she did at fifteen. "I don't know, 'Mis; I guess it's just – as soon as I start doing all that stuff, it's real. I'm giving up."

He turns his head meekly and lifts his eyes up to hers. He seems years older.

"And I'm not ready for that," he says. "So for – I mean, since June, I've been... following some leads. Doing the detective thing. You know how it is."

"Yeah," Artemis whispers, gripping the edges of the seat cushions.

"He's not gone," Dick insists, looking and sounding, for a moment, crazed. "There are ways to get him back; there _are_. There were too many unknowns with the MFDs, and the chrysalis, and _all_ of it – it was just too messy to be something like..." He gulps.

"You're not making any sense," Artemis tells him.

"Aren't I, though?" Dick retorts, turning to her fully, gesticulating. "He didn't disintegrate or explode; he wasn't vaporized; he just – he just _vanished_. As a whole! Corporeally! He _went_ somewhere! Somewhere we can _get_ him."

"And exactly how do you propose we do that?" Artemis explodes out, surging to her feet and staring him down with her arms thrown out. "Are you just gonna reach into thin air and he'll _be_ there? You gonna ask Zatanna to yank him out of a hat? I'm sure you've got some _great_ ideas floating around in all of that denial!"

"Artemis," he murmurs, blinking up at her. She starts to calm down, her limbs lowering. He's doing that thing that he does when he's grief-stricken, or afraid, or cracking apart; that thing where his voice hiccups and bumps, a string of stutters and softness, like a kid's. "I-I don't know specifics yet, but he – he's _not_... he's _here_; I... I _know_ he is. And when we find him, we... I'll make everything up – to _you_, the-the _Team_... I-I've just been _researching_, and—"

"So have I," she snaps back, and then grimaces when she realizes what she's just revealed to him.

Recognition sparks in his eyes and she knows she's done for.

"Then I'm not so crazy after all, am I?" he says coolly.

Artemis immediately turns away, folding her arms and crossing the room to stop in front of the window. It's drizzling outside, dark and starless. The street lights flicker, pus-yellow, on the damp sidewalks.

"Listen." Dick's voice is weary and hoarse. "I know you wouldn't take something like this lying down, either. You can't fool me, 'Mis. Never could."

"Yeah, like you'd ever be worth the effort of trying to fool," Artemis mutters snidely, rubbing her upper arms and shivering. The damn apartment doesn't have any heat. "Just forget it, Dick. He's..."

Something pricks up in the back of her throat and prevents her from finishing. She claps her palms onto her face, curling her fingers into her hair and screwing her eyes shut, clenching her jaw, breathing out loudly through her stifled nose.

"You don't believe it, either," Dick says softly. She hates that he's right, hates that she's no longer the only one who's going insane – Dick's likeness of mind doesn't comfort her, or give her company; it makes her want to shove him away, hole herself up further, because if she's not alone, there's already too much hope, and hope makes her weak.

"You don't know a thing, Dick," she finally hisses, dropping her hands sharply back to her sides. "You haven't even _been_ here."

"I've been in Tibet," he tells her, empty of expression, nearly monotonous. "Infinity Island. Taipei. Bhutan." He takes a breath. "Ra's al-Ghul is alive."

That certainly gets her attention. She spins back around so swiftly that her hair musses.

"_What_?" she whispers. "No. No; I _saw_ him die. Ra's is dead."

"Gimme a break; like that guy would ever just be a good sport and _die_." Dick snorts. "No – he's alive. I had to track a lot of rumors, enough hearsay to sink a ship, but I found him; I saw him in Taipei when I was checking out the League of Shadows. Good as new."

"How?" Artemis demands, rhetorically.

Dick chuckles hollowly. "The Pit."

"You're gonna have to elaborate." Artemis huffs, crossing her arms and glowering at him.

"The Lazarus Pit," he expounds, still not looking at her, but at some indistinct point at her feet. "Put a body in there, no matter how dead, and they come out alive." He smirks to himself. "Ra's is a smart guy."

"How hasn't the League heard about these?" Artemis demands, but her logical questions are eradicated in favor of the franticness now erupting from inside of her. She crouches down in front of Dick, her eyes wild, and grips his shoulders. "Does it really—_could we_—?"

Dick bows his head, unsmiling, and avoids her eye. She blinks at him, coming down from the spurt of desperation, and loosens her grasp.

"I looked into it, 'Mis. In as much detail as I could. But we—we don't have a body," he sighs. "And even if we did, it... it's not that simple."

"What's not simple about it?" she half-shouts, shaking him slightly.

"Your sister dearest put it best, I think, when she caught me looking at it on Infinity Island." His mouth twitches.

"_I know what you're thinking, birdy. And I'm here to give you some free advice: trying it would be the dumbest thing you'll ever do, even by your standards. You know how it works, right? You go in dead; you come out insane. You willing to pay that price? Didn't think so."_

His face darkens as he finishes recounting the words, but Artemis can tell, right away, that it's not a cloud related to Wally, or to bringing him back. It falls into place in her mind just as he stands, striding away from her so his back can be to her, but she rises to her feet and grabs his elbow.

"Not Jason," she whispers, begs.

Dick tugs his arm out of her hand and doesn't say anything for a second, but he clears his throat and straightens and turns to face her again.

"The Lazarus Pit was a dead end," he croaks, running a hand through his hair. It falls limply back into place. "Took up four months."

Artemis slumps, cold in every joint from disappointment. But then she feels two hands brace her shoulders, clinging to them tightly, nudging her back to attention. Dick is clasping her upper arms, looking her straight in the eye, manic with focus and urgency. It takes an incredible amount of self-restraint not to draw away, but there's tragedy in his blue eyes like none she's ever seen, and she can't look away.

"Dick, what?" she murmurs.

"There's something else, though," he says, hushed but frantic and insistent. "I've been talking to Adam Strange. And there's something else."

His hands release her, falling to her elbows and jiggling them as though trying to encourage her.

"There's another way," he repeats. Artemis's kitchen clock ticks to 1:00 AM, the red digits glowing in the pitch blackness of the night.

"Tell me," she says, just as the kettle starts to whistle.

* * *

The payphone booth smells of urine. The greasy crook of the telephone, pressed to her cheek, makes her shudder. It's raining, slick and unpleasant, making the black streets of Gotham's most notorious slum look like rivers of oil.

She hears three rings, dull and flat, and among them a gurgle of distant thunder, before a voice answers.

"Hello?"

"It's me," Artemis says into the receiver, pushing her wet hair off of her forehead.

The silence on the other end lasts so long that she's seconds away from redialing before it's broken again.

"You stupid little—"

"I need a favor," she interjects. "A big favor."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah." She pulls a face. "Gosh, it's so sweet when you pretend you care."

"Who said anything about pretending?" A child wails in the background. "I'll be there in a minute; just sing her something."

"Listen," Artemis talks over the sound. "I know I shouldn't even be asking, and I know it's a long shot _anyway_ with you, but I need your help."

"You sound so _pained_ asking. Does it hurt, admitting you're nowhere without me?"

"Enough with the games," Artemis barks emphatically. "It's – it's about Wally."

Another silence, drawn-out and pensive and impenetrable and, at least to Artemis, deeply judgmental.

"Oh, please." The voice is hushed and soft and astonishingly gentle. "Please, _please_ don't do this."

"Like you care," Artemis mutters.

"For the love of – of _course_ I care, you _brat_. That's my job. Or have you forgotten?"

"You make it kinda hard to remember, I have to say." Artemis leans against the glass wall, slipping her loose hand into her pocket. Water drips from her hair onto her raincoat.

"I nearly lost Red to this, kid; I'm not going to lose you, too."

"How about we leave the whole 'lost or not' decision up to me, huh?" Artemis proposes harshly. "I'm calling you, aren't I?"

Another swell of quiet.

"True. All right. What services do you require?"

"Luthor," Artemis replies. "I need access to Luthor."

She hears a trademark mix of a hum and a sigh on the other end, crackling just slightly in the earpiece.

"Do I get to tag along?"

Artemis smirks, knowing she's already won. "Well, two cats are better than one."

Her sister laughs, nearly a purr, and Artemis can easily envision her tossing her head back, twirling a strand of black hair on one finger and kicking a leg up on the table.

"Not if curiosity kills one of them," Jade replies slyly.

"Hey, I've already got a life insurance policy," Artemis bandies back in the same tone, one she's practiced from the time she was seven, always so desperate to be like her older sister, the one who moved through the night like a panther. "It's called satisfaction."

"I'll contact you with a meeting time and a location," Jade says, crisp and cool. "Soon."

"Good. I'll talk to you then."

"Oh, Artemis?" Jade calls just before Artemis pulls the phone away to hang it up.

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you want to go among mad people?"

Artemis smirks, her fingers fluttering at the corner of the phone box.

"I must be," she answers. "Or I wouldn't have come here."

Jade laughs, three little drawls of amusement, and then Artemis hears a click. The lightning, white and vicious, strikes.


	5. Chapter 5

**If the end of the chapter seems suddenly rapid and hectic, good; that was intentional.**

**Izzy was super great looking over this and giving suggestions (a small percentage of which were actually mature), Libby is always a delight to talk to when I need pointers for writing her girl Jade, and of course, Emma OK'd this for impulsive publication, so if it's extra-awful this time, you know who to blame. She's too nice to me. When she's not holding a pitchfork at my throat. **

* * *

The night before Jade finally calls her back (four days later), Artemis dreams of Paris.

The wind is fierce and keeps her from breathing, but the suffocation is exhilarating, like standing alone in the eye of the storm and looking up at the Eiffel Tower is something she's wanted to do all her life.

It smells like rain, and lightning, and on her lips she can taste a warm and lively tincture of something she knows she recognizes, but can't place. She pushes her fingers onto her lower lip, like maybe she can stick the familiarity to them further and it will help her, but it doesn't.

"Hey," she hears behind her, a sound that flutters like a candle in the tempest frothing around her. "Beautiful. Wake up."

She turns around and notices that her heart doesn't feel like it's beating. His hair is red and he has light sunburns on his shoulders. He's facing her, gangly and irritated, with a towel around his neck and a smear of sunscreen on his nose.

"Who are you?!" he demands at the top of his lungs, his ears reddening, but there's something unbearably sad about it, like he can't remember; and just as Artemis reaches out her hand to touch him, he's gone, a blast of cold and hostile air that stings her face instead of warming it. His footprints stay on the cobblestones, black like charcoal burns.

She's alone again, and the Tower is black against the stormy sky, and even as the tornadoes begin to increase their mercilessness around her, she feels her whole posture go loose, and she gazes tiredly up at it, though she can't see the top. The lightning comes and tears her in half and then she's a part of it, and Paris is far away now, a distant little husk of a dream she doesn't have any use for anymore.

The sound of her cell phone vibrating yanks her out of it like a noose, and she's got the speaker against her ear before she can even register that she's not a million agitated particles in a crumbling city anymore.

"Jade?" she croaks, rubbing at her eyes.

There's a short pause, and a strained sigh.

"Hi, Artemis. It's... uh, this is Barry. Barry Allen?"

Artemis, instantly awake, sits up sharply, startling Brucely.

"Hello," she says, but it comes out cold.

There's another small silence.

"I just, uh..." He clears his throat, but his voice is still gentle. "I just wanted to see how you're holding up."

"I'm fine," Artemis says, in a tone that practically dares him not to believe her.

"Good." He sounds unsure. "Uh, good. Listen..."

She does – she listens attentively and a bit tetchily to his pinched pause, knowing he's about to trawl up a monologue that will either bore her or anger her.

"Word's gotten around the League that you're on voluntary leave of absence," he says, a bit cautiously. "That you aren't looking too great. You didn't register for your senior year at Stanford. Bart won't stop talking about how worried he is and I don't know about you living where you are now all by yourself – and your mom hasn't heard from you in two weeks – so, uh, sorry, Artemis, but I can't say I believe what you're telling me." He lets out a breath that, to any other ear but hers and maybe Iris's, would not sound as though it's shaking. "I think we should talk."

Artemis has sat through (and eavesdropped on) her fair share of Barry lectures, but Wally had always been the recipient. She still knows the tone, though, and hearing it used against her is making her temples start to throb.

"I'm not your nephew, Barry," she mutters, low and bitter, and hangs up.

She sets her phone back down on the bedside table, but doesn't make any attempts to go back to sleep, drawing her knees up under the sheets and resting her elbows on her knees, watching the gray light of the morning crawl in through the window. There's snow falling outside, pale and sickly. Brucely blinks up at her from the right side of the bed, his ears perking and drooping alternately with uncertainty.

She runs a hand over her face and pushes her hair back from her forehead, closing her eyes. She hasn't heard Barry's voice since Wally's memorial, nor has she had any interest in hearing it. It has nothing of further worth to say to her after, "He wanted me to tell you he loved you."

She drops her head onto her knees, trying to push out the headache. Brucely finally shimmies over on his front paws to rest his chin on her foot, closing his eyes sleepily, and her hand strays to scratch behind his ears as her eyes begin to burn.

She knows she would be fine if not for the fact that there's still a chance.

She can picture all of it. Gradually, Tigress would make a good blonde, a good hero, one who would smile at least once a day, laugh a little more each month, and eventually forget how to use a bow.

She'd start to sleep on both sides of the bed. She'd start to sleep, period. She'd become accustomed to running alone in the mornings, and she'd grow her hair out, and she'd learn not to mind the wind or the smell of mown grass and barbecues. She'd learn to only shiver from the cold itself, instead of from what it meant. She'd learn to stop wondering why her hands are always empty of partners.

She'd have lunches with Zatanna, she'd bake with M'gann, she'd hike with Conner, and she'd walk along the beach with Kaldur. They would reacquaint themselves with the sun together and the warmth would not hurt her.

She'd forgive Dick, welcome Bart. She'd see the world after the invasion, and she'd tell herself that she hadn't lost much, not really, except for a boy she loved, once. She'd have monthly dinners with Mary and Rudy – but those would end, too, someday, and "Mary" and "Rudy" would eventually just be tragic little names she knew from a long time ago.

So would "Wally." Wally would be a name, a wild and wistful tragedy, that would only occasionally dim her eyes, when she thought no one was watching. She'd learn to stop crying about the oozing sore on her heart and smooth it over with laughter, and nostalgia, and fondness, a lot of distant and detached jocularity and stories, only stories, and she would be herself again, only herself, by herself, that incredible young woman who had faced a tragedy and surmounted it.

It would be hard and it would be sad and it would take time. It would start out as a mess, but she'd clean it up with her own two hands, with the aid of someone else's wayward fingers. And sooner or later, Wally would stop being a ghost, and he would be a legend. Had it been Bialya or Qurac that he had carried her through? Had the stripes on his motorcycle jacket been yellow or red? Had his eyes been green or blue? Had he majored in Chemistry or Biochemistry? Had his favorite color been blue or gold? It wouldn't really matter, in the end.

She wouldn't hear him screaming; she would hear him laughing. She'd tell people what he'd been like, and she'd get her degree and live in a tidy apartment and Brucely's muzzle would grow whiter, and she would breathe in deep and she would cope.

But she knows, now, that she'll never have that, because she had heard him in the zeta tube, and she had heard his voice in the echoing crevices of a far-off temple; she knows that he is somewhere, sprinting, scrambling, lost and ablaze, like a careening star whose course will, someday, somehow, land it in her hands.

Her cell phone rings again. This time she knows for certain who's on the other end.

* * *

It's cold in Star City, and drizzling, and as Artemis strides down a block with her collar turned against the dampness and her hands in the pockets of her peacoat, she wonders why she ever liked it.

When she comes to the apartment building with the brick walls and the polished fire escapes, she turns sharply to the stoop and goes up the stairs with a deliberate swiftness, shaking her hair out and pressing her thumb to the buzzer.

A reply comes: "Yes?"

"Star City?" Artemis says into the intercom with an amused smirk she can't be bothered to hold back. "_Really_?"

There's an instant sharp buzz that sounds in response, and Jade's snicker crackles with static.

"What can I say? I couldn't deny the redhead rates they had."

"That's not really specific; should Roy be worried?" (It feels funny, joking – but she can't really imagine interacting with Jade on any other level.)

Jade insults her and tells her to come up, and Artemis hears the door to the apartment building unlock.

Before she turns the knob, she turns slightly to survey the city street over her shoulder. There's a part of her that doesn't feel right visiting Star City without dropping in on Ollie, and maybe the sight of the rooftops she used to swing off of and the street corners where she used to stem bloody noses tugs at the younger girl in her.

The city smells like rain, the fresh kind, nothing like the grime of Gotham. For a second, she longs to see it at night again, a canopy of gold lights and a purple skyline and Ollie's silhouette against the moon, beckoning for her to follow him, putting Scooby-Doo Band-Aids on her skinned knees no matter how much she tried to shoo him away.

"Uh, the apartment is the _other_ way?" Jade's voice cuts in again from the intercom, and Artemis shakes her head as though to dislodge the nostalgia before turning away from the sidewalk and opening the door.

There's an elevator, but she takes the stairs – a spiraling set with metal black rails and a musty sort of smell – up to the top floor (the twelfth). She passes several doors along the hallway, which is carpeted a discolored shade of green, and counts down the numbers until she arrives at the one she's looking for, at the very end of the hall.

She knocks.

She's expecting to see Jade on the other side when it opens, but instead she's greeted by Roy. His hand stays on the doorknob as he stands in the doorway, and Lian is situated on his hip, blinking up at Artemis with an unfaltering grin still uneven from teething.

"Hey, silly girl," Artemis coos, and Lian claps her hands.

"What, no nicknames for me?" Roy snorts dryly. "I'm hurt."

Artemis squints at him, stuffing her hands into her pockets. Roy's whole possessive bit with Green Arrow several years ago hadn't exactly gotten them off on the right foot, and though they're marginally friendlier with each other now, she's never been able to get over a sort of knee-jerk abrasion whenever she sees him.

"Hi, Roy," she ekes out with hesitation.

It's also strange to see him without a mask on. Or a scowl. While wearing duck-patterned pajama pants and a purple t-shirt and holding a toddler. And not actively hating everyone around him.

"It's good to see you," he says genuinely, bouncing a now-chortling Lian lightly until she squeals.

Artemis can't help marveling at him – the man smiling at her with a kid in his muscular arms, the man married to her _sister_, not to mention the father of her sister's _child_ (the latter description being a miracle all its own)... he's the same anger-chiseled boy half again her height who had hated her, called her a traitor, torn her open in front of her Team, blinded her as she had scrambled to step out of his seemingly endless shadow. The boy who, like an older brother, she had hated but still wanted to embarrass, prove wrong, and above all else, impress.

"Good to see you, too," she mutters back.

She hasn't really seen him since the League's memorial for Wally. He'd tried to approach her and probably offer his condolences, but by that point condolences had started to make her physically sick, so she had avoided him, slipping away through the crowd to hide in some empty Watchtower guest quarters and twist the eulogy she hadn't read into indistinguishable shreds. Prior to that, she'd only really worried about him vicariously through Wally (who had always been one to lose sleep if even one of his friends was unhappy).

Looking at Roy now, though, she starts to understand what Jade had meant on the phone. Roy had given himself, blood and drive and body, to searching for someone impossible to find. Perhaps in the beginning, his friends had supported him, out of compassion, and later out of pity, but it had dwindled, the same as his sanity and his hope had, until only willpower, blind and tenacious and hungry for blood, had moved his fumbling limbs.

But Speedy had, at least, been somewhere, sleeping silently and dreaming away the life he'd been losing, the people he'd loved, the ticking second snatched nonchalantly away by Lex Luthor.

Artemis's brain screeches to a halt and the backs of her eyes start to prick with fearsome heat. _Luthor_, she thinks, with venom and malice, and it sounds bitter even in her head.

"Dearest," Jade calls from another room. "Come in here a minute."

Artemis glances at Roy, who gives her back an unimpressed stare.

"Trust me; that's not me," he deadpans. Only then does he seem to notice that he's blocking her way, and he steps aside to accommodate her. She permits herself a snort and strides past him, crossing the living room until she's in the bedroom on the opposite side of the floor.

She hadn't paid much attention to the interior decorating of the place, but in retrospect it had seemed nice. Disheveled and dysfunctional, like Roy and Jade themselves, but nice.

Artemis halts at the threshold of the bedroom. The bed inside is spacious, but unmade, its thick comforter and dark sheets rumpled. There's a crib at the foot of it, dark brown wood and packed with toys, several of which disconcertingly resemble weapons.

Artemis's eyes rove to the right and land on Jade, who's rummaging through the closet, her back turned, her face obscured by several winter coats.

"You rang?" Artemis folds her arms, raising an eyebrow though she knows Jade can't see it. "Also, _why_ is your apartment on the top floor?"

"It makes getaways more fun," Jade replies slyly. "So, how's life? Stopped any crimes with your little hero club lately?"

"I'm on leave of absence, actually," Artemis says a bit more sharply than she'd intended. She clenches her arms slightly.

"Ohoho," Jade chuckles without missing a beat. "How sad. Are you guys going through a rough patch?"

Artemis shrugs tightly.

"I figured I'd work faster on my own," she explains tersely. "They were holding me back."

Jade finally leans out of the closet with a familiar mask in her hand and a green garment in the other. Her mouth is tilted with amusement.

"Hmm, you're a big girl now." The mockery in it is overt. "Should I be flattered you came to me?"

"Sure; if having inside access to a bunch of shady people and morally questionable supervillains is something you're proud of," Artemis retorts. Jade pretends to wince.

"Oh, I'd be crushed if I wasn't holding all the cards." She leers, and Artemis thinks, not for the first time, that she doesn't really need the mask. "Although I have to ask, did you lose your shame along with your boyfriend? You must have, if I'm the only one you can turn to."

Artemis bristles in an instant, and Jade looks immediately repentant, the smile vanishing to give way to a deep frown.

"I shouldn't have said that, sis; I'm sorry," she whispers in an uncharacteristic show of apology. "Instinct, you know?"

"Yeah." It's automatic. Artemis looks down to keep the malice in her gaze focused on something that can't look back at her. "So. What's the plan?"

"Right down to business," Jade mutters, though not without gentleness. Artemis isn't used to being treated delicately, especially by Jade, so she scowls up, her mouth thinning. Jade throws her hands up in defeat, shrugging indifferently.

"LexCorp is, as I'm sure you know, in Metropolis," she begins, setting the mask and costume down at the foot of the bed and straightening, crossing her arms. "The security there is tight, naturally, but it shouldn't be difficult to get in with a few backflips and tactfully-placed smoke bombs, some knock-out gas – the usual suspects. Luthor keeps his alien tech in a safe in his office. It'll take a few minutes for me to open it; I've done it before, of _course_—" She flashes a smirk. "But he changes the combination every week, and we'll have his delightful little robot helper to fend off. But it shouldn't be difficult if we do it the right way, and before you know it, you'll have your own little Father Box."

Artemis nods once, absorbing the information.

"What do you need it for?" Jade inquires as innocently as someone like her could.

"Long story," Artemis replies brusquely. "When are we going in?"

"Tonight," Jade answers, shaking her head at Artemis's tight-lipped response but knowing better than to press her further. "One-thirty AM. That's when the security shifts trade off. You brought your own equipment, I'm hoping."

Artemis rolls her eyes. "_Yes_, Jade, I managed to not be _stupid_."

"Oh, gosh, we'll have to call Mom and Dad; they'll want to know." Jade snickers. "All right, get out. I need to do a little training before I—"

"Suit up?" Artemis provides. It's Team lingo that pops out of her automatically.

Jade shrugs easily and rolls her eyes skyward.

"If you want to be _lame_ about it, then yeah," she retorts. "Come on."

She leads her back out into the living room, where Roy is entertaining and feeding Lian at the same time, leaning on the arm of the couch.

"Little sucker's almost done with dinner," he grunts in an attempt at sounding gruff, but the affection in his voice is shoddily concealed. "I think she likes this stuff, Chesh."

Jade chuckles and comes to stand beside him, dropping her chin onto his shoulder and lacing her arms behind her back, cocking an eyebrow down at her daughter. At the sight of her mother, Lian squeals and throws her arms in the air. Her beaming mouth has a ribbon of green mush around it.

"She likes _everything_," Jade says, teasing Roy's ear with her right hand and Lian's chin with her left. "Clever girl."

Artemis shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, trying to stifle the crawling ache in her stomach at the site of Jade and Roy gazing lovingly at their child, Jade in Roy's boxer shorts and a t-shirt too large for her, Roy in his absurd pajamas, both of them crazy, dysfunctional grown-ups with a crippling inability to keep a steady grip on anything except each other.

_Yeah, but do they have a dog?_ her mind prods dryly.

Jade gives Roy's ear a well-timed nibble, whispers something in Vietnamese into it, and swiftly draws back before he can fully register it, spinning back to face Artemis with a satisfied expression.

Frankly, Artemis is glad she can't remember much of her Vietnamese.

"Relax, sis," Jade says breezily, though it's more of an order than a suggestion. "Play with Lian for a bit; she's missed you."

Roy automatically presents Lian to Artemis, and the girl giggles, beaming toothily up at her. Artemis softens in spite of herself at the sight of the mirthful copper eyes and immediately scoops Lian into her arms, bouncing her lightly.

Lian babbles cheerily at her and reaches one pudgy hand up to pet her cropped hair. She's clearly fascinated by its new length, as she lifts her other hand and pats the short strands at either side, silent with concentration. Artemis is so enraptured by her careful handling of her hair that she doesn't even notice Roy follow Jade back into the bedroom, but then she hears the door close and looks up with a slight start. Lian follows suit.

"Oh, boy, little miss," Artemis mutters dryly, rolling her eyes back to Lian. "Maybe we should get outta here."

She knows Star City well enough that she remembers there's a park two blocks down. She glances out the window to see that a breeze outside is pushing the now-empty white clouds apart to reveal a sky on the verge of early dusk, purpling at its rim.

She hears a thud and a quiet laugh – Jade's, so unpredictably soft and open that it throws her a little – and the muffled sound of Roy's voice grumbling, "Just cut the games and take your clothes off."

Jade immediately retorts, "Do it yourself, Red, or you can forget the bl—"

"Oh-_KAY_!" Artemis shouts, startling Lian and silencing the apparently quite important scene playing out behind the closed door. "Let's go out for a walk, huh, kiddo?"

She's out the door with Lian and her carrier in tow with speed that would have made Wally jealous.

(Her stomach gives a barely felt pang.)

* * *

Midnight comes and Artemis doesn't even realize that there are only nine days left until Christmas.

She's never been in Metropolis after ten o'clock. It's unpredictably dead, a maze of sparsely populated streets and blacked-out windows and ambient city noise under a dark indigo canopy of blank fog.

She and Jade face LexCorp from the top of the office building that neighbors it. The wind slices past them, stinging their skin.

They stand side-by-side, equal heights, with their feline masks fixed on their faces. Artemis slips her hand into her pocket and gingerly pulls out a sourly familiar yellow stone on a black ribbon. She turns it over in her hands.

"I didn't know Tigress liked to accessorize," Jade quips, her voice slightly tinny from the mask.

"It's what kept me disguised on the sub," Artemis explains emptily. "A glamour charm."

"You kept that thing?" Jade sounds surprised.

Artemis shrugs churlishly. "I thought it might come in handy."

"What a shame." Jade sighs. "She makes a decent blonde. Tigress, I mean."

She rolls her head and shoulders back until the joints crack. Artemis brushes her hair behind her ears and tries not to let the orange hatred throbbing through her bones consume her. Apparently she doesn't do a very good job.

"You okay?" Jade asks, with an admittedly disarming amount of genuine concern.

"Yeah," Artemis replies in a breath, clenching her fist around the charm. "Never better."

Jade apparently accepts this, cracking her knuckles and breathing in and out deeply.

"We'll go in through the garage," she declares, lifting her arms until they're akimbo, black claws grazing her hips. The wind tangles her hair. "There's only one poor idiot covering the entrance."

"Armed?" Artemis asks in a clipped tone.

Jade's laugh is framed by a smirk that Artemis picks out even with the mask in the way.

"They all are," she chuckles. "Even the janitor."

Artemis sneers and crouches down to scrutinize the glamour charm so that she doesn't fire an arrow into the window of Luthor's office just on instinct. "Coward."

"No, just smart," Jade mutters with amusement, and she stretches, humming to herself. "But we're smarter. And prettier." She turns her head to Artemis, who looks up and flicks her eyes once over the jaggedly leering mask. "You ready, sis?"

Artemis rises to her feet, inhaling through her nose and fastening the glamour charm at her neck with steady fingers.

"Ready," she affirms, and, without another pause, she leaps.

For a moment, the way the wind the roars in her ears and deafens her reminds her of the same sonic bursts of air that would give her spurting headaches whenever Wally would take off with her in tow, but then her feet clang onto the metal of the fire escape and the familiarity breaks away.

Jade follows behind her and they both bound and backflip down the rest of the fire escape, slipping into every splashing shadow that meets them. They make hardly any further noise, moving with stealth and poise, even as they slink into a patch of darkness outside the open parking garage.

Artemis's heart doesn't hammer with adrenaline, or quiver with fear. It stays absolutely still.

They both come to a halt against the concrete wall just beside the entrance. A car exits, rolling languidly by, and Jade flattens herself even more against the surface, but Artemis doesn't see any point in hiding further. She can feel Jade side-eyeing her, but she doesn't acknowledge it.

Jade leans slightly forward, glancing around the corner, and flicks her wrist, beckoning for Artemis to go ahead of her. Artemis obliges, sprinting swiftly past, three orbs containing knockout gas held between her fingers.

She swoops past the security booth after leaping over the parking arm, and flings the balls through the slightly open plexiglass window, where they rattle against the surface before falling to the floor. The man occupying it, lean and harsh-looking in his black uniform, opens his mouth to yell something but doesn't get a syllable out before the putrid smoke bursts up from the ground and engulfs him.

Jade springs to her side and they both make their ways up the ramp to the first door that they find, one that opens into a dual staircase entrance and elevator. Artemis tries the handle, but it doesn't budge. Her eyes fall on a card reader just beside it on the wall and she grumbles.

Jade shoves her lightly aside and pulls out a black card, sliding it down through the slot with one smooth movement of her arm. There's an approving beep and a click, and Jade chuckles in her throat when she fluidly twists the handle down and slides the door open, bowing for Artemis to enter.

Artemis shoots a passing glance at a security camera as she strides in. Jade closes the door silently behind them and whispers, "Don't panic, kid. The card neutralizes all security devices connected to the building's mainframe."

"Swell," Artemis mutters, and mashes her thumb onto the elevator button.

"The elevator? Bold," Jade comments under her breath.

"I wanna punch something," Artemis growls. "This seems like a good place to start."

"Not that I disapprove, but keep your focus," Jade reminds her, pulling a sai from her belt and twirling it between her fingers as the floor numbers light up in descending order from 16 (they go up to 32). "We're here to steal something, not get noticed."

"Yeah, whatever," Artemis scoffs just as the elevator reaches them and the doors open.

"Hi, boys," Jade purrs to the two suited businessmen inside. She grabs one of them at the collar and Artemis takes the other, and as the men shout indignantly, the girls haul them roughly out, tossing them against the opposite wall.

One of them spits out an insult at Jade and Artemis, without missing a beat, whirls into a roundhouse kick and slams her heel into his chin. Blood spurts from his lip and he crashes into the wall again, much to the apparent rage of his friend, who Artemis spins back around to punch in the cheek.

"Get _in_," Jade drawls, already standing in the elevator. Artemis bounds in after her. The doors close and the sounds of the two whimpering men fade in favor of distant, inane jazz music.

Artemis glares dangerously up at the speakers. Jade snickers behind one hand.

"Luthor's office is on the top floor, but we won't go directly there," she says briskly. "We'll stop the elevator two floors under his and take the stairs the rest of the way. Much less conspicuous."

"Fine." Artemis tosses her bangs out of her eyes and pulls out a bola. She's saving her crossbow for last.

The elevator crawls up floor-by-floor, and nothing disrupts its ascent, so Artemis assumes that Jade's funny little card had worked. They don't speak to each other, and the silence is comfortable; when the elevator comes to a halt at the 30th floor and its doors slide apart again, Artemis is the first to step out.

She stops in her tracks.

"What... is _this_?" she breaths in disbelief.

The entire floor is mechanical in nature, metal staircases and catwalks and pumping machines three times her and Jade's heights. Jade appears at her shoulder and puts her hand on one cocked hip, humming pensively to herself.

"Who knows." She shrugs. "Well, actually, _I_ do. But some things have to stay sacred."

Artemis opens her mouth to interrogate Jade further, turning her head, but her eyes are caught instead by a security guard who has apparently just rounded one of the corners and is presently aiming his gun at the back of Jade's head.

"Do I have something on my face?" Jade asks idly, but Artemis snarls and sprints past her and slams into the man, who grunts with the impact. His gun goes flying. Artemis smashes him against the metal surface of one of the machines and punches him in the face with her right fist, then with her left, then her right again, then her left, until his blood is on her knuckles and Jade is suddenly gripping her elbow and wrenching her away, cursing.

Artemis flails, but it does her no good; she barely has a second to draw a breath before she's slammed into a wall. She wrenches her eyes open to see Jade's mask perhaps an inch from her face, her own black eyes thin with rage.

"Artemis, this isn't an _attack_," Jade growls to her, suddenly serious, gripping her wrist until it throbs. Her eyes narrow further behind the mask. Artemis squirms wrathfully at being pinned. "It's a quick slip in and a quick slip out, or else it's suicide. Now stop making a scene."

Artemis wrenches violently out of her grasp and shoves her away by the shoulders. Jade doesn't stumble, but takes the lurch in stride, backing off.

"You don't tell me what to _do_, Jade—"

"Oh, that's adorable." Jade tilts her head and Artemis can sense a malicious sneer behind the mask. "But I call the shots here, kid. This is my turf. And I've got my reputation _and_ my life to worry about if I'm meddling with a member of the Light. I'd say that sticking my neck out for you entitles me to being the boss; wouldn't you?"

Artemis's face contorts with spite, but she does not argue. Jade nods shortly in conclusion and releases her, rising, slipping past to continue down the hallway. Artemis scowls after her for a few seconds without moving, but follows.

Jade spends the next few yards several paces in front of her. The machines roil and roar around them, smothering the entire yawning floor with unbearable noise. Artemis fumes the whole way, her fingers intermittently skimming over the handle of her crossbow on her belt, her forearms itching for the sensation of firing it.

They come around a corner toward the staircase to the upper two floors and both promptly halt.

"Perfect," Artemis deadpans.

_Naturally_, a horde of rapidly approaching security guards is in the way, with guns at the ready. She immediately takes a combative stance, crouching slightly and baring her teeth on instinct.

"Oh, good, the band's here," Jade drones idly, pulling out her other sai.

"I thought you said that thing scrambled all security tech," Artemis snarls.

"You can't scramble humans." Jade giggles slightly. "And okay, sue me. I thought it'd be fun to get some exercise. I _may_ have set it up so there would be a teeny, _tiny_ alarm. Just for the sake of fun."

"Screw you, Jade," Artemis barks, just as the men come to a halt a couple of yards away and raise their weapons.

"You girls lost?" one of them asks snidely.

"Ooh, gosh, yes, that's the _only_ possible explanation for why we're here, Otis," Jade retorts. "Can you give us some directions? I think what we're looking for is—"

She silences herself before propelling herself forward on her heel, somersaulting in midair with a leap and grasping one mook's shoulders to give her enough leverage to viciously kick two others while holding herself up with her arms. She spins and backflips into a crouch on the floor again, and when one of them aims his gun at her, she shoots back up again, headbutting him in the chin and bowling him backwards.

Jade is being efficient, but Artemis wants to bloody noses. She wants bone to crunch under her knuckles. She wants bruises in the shape of her kneecaps on swollen faces. She wants battle and danger and vengeance and all the other things she's using to compensate for wanting Wally back.

She lets out a cry and lunges.

She's only really half-conscious of her actions, running solely on the natural instinct that had gotten her a reprimand from Kaldur in the first place – but she's not on any Team now; she has no children to worry about making an impression upon. Four guards go down around her and she doesn't even pay attention to how.

She can concentrate easily on causing a little bit of pain and agony to the employees of the man who had led Wally to his demise. But she knows that someone should use their time in LexCorp wisely. As she spins around to smash her knuckles squarely into a guard's nose until she feels it snap under her skin, she comes slightly to her senses.

"Go!" she screams to Jade in a voice not her own. "GO!"

Jade only shoots her one flash of a look before bounding away, fleet and silent, up the staircase. One of the guards starts to pursue her, raising his gun, but Artemis, without batting an eyelash, immediately raises her crossbow and shoots an arrow into his back. When he falls to the floor, bleeding and gurgling, she feels nothing.

Another comes up behind her, grabs her in a chokehold, and she immediately uses his grip as leverage to swing herself up, legs first, and backflip over his shoulders, landing catlike on two feet and, slipping a dagger out of her belt, burying it between his ribs.

Hardly missing a beat as he buckles, she whirls around and roundhouse kicks another incoming gunman, and then spins to punch another in the jaw, and her limbs move with sharpness and certainty but no mercy, and when they're all still on the ground, when flecks of their blood decorate her mask like war paint, she sneers at them all and sprints up the stairs to follow Jade. She does not look behind her.

Jade meets her at the upper doorway with a Father Box in her hand. Artemis stares a moment too long at the peculiar circuitry and Jade has to slap her lightly on the cheek to bring her to attention again.

They both sprint back the way they had come. Only when they're out the parking garage, down the street, and up on another rooftop does Jade strike her fully across the face and scream at her to pull herself together.

Artemis relishes the sting and expels blood-flecked spittle onto the gravel rooftop. She isn't sure whether it's her blood or someone else's, but either option is exhilarating. Either option is the fuel for her second nature, honestly.

She takes none of Jade's enraged and disarmingly emotional tirade to heart, but she does take the Father Box, gripping it in her bruised, blood-sticky hands.

"You idiot," Jade whispers to her back as she walks away toward the other end of the building.

Artemis halts, but does not turn around.

"That's the last time I help you," Jade hisses. "I don't care how much you loved him. He's not worth any of this."

Artemis looks out over the skyline, and the wind rustles at the nape of her neck, egging her forward, hostile and chaotic.

"Not your call, Jade," she finally murmurs back, and before Jade can offer up any other useless words, Artemis has hopped down onto the metal grate of the fire escape, and when she moves with fleet and relentless feet down the ladders, she feels, for all intents and purposes, like she's soaring, no matter how heavy the Father Box is, no matter how much dry blood flakes off onto it.

She does not return to Jade's apartment. When she gets home, there's a text from Zatanna on her almost-dead phone.

_just talked to dick. what the hell are you two thinking?_

Artemis takes her mask off, washes the blood from it in the kitchen sink, and does nothing when her cell phone gives one last indignant beep before powering off.

And when she goes to sleep, the Father Box making odd noises throughout the night, and when she tries to match her breath to the throbbing pace of her fresh bruises, she dreams of nothing at all.


	6. Chapter 6

**I promise this one's happy. I promise!**

**The usual thanks to the usual people (that is, Libby and Emma)! Izzy was also really cool about listening to me complain about this and my boyfriend told me how to make tea so he saved me, basically. And Cat's great; I love Cat, with her gorgeous chapter graphics and gorgeous self and just holy crap, there's a fount of motivation in every corner this time around. Hopefully this chapter is going to start things on the uphill climb (which will maybe make up for its comparatively short length).**

* * *

On Christmas Eve morning, Artemis buttons up her thickest, darkest coat and walks two blocks in the snow to her mother's apartment.

As she approaches it, lifting her head up against the chilly breeze, she starts to slow. She and Wally had accidentally made out on the stoop many times, a notable one being that when Wally had knocked over a trash can and almost gotten shot by the crazy old gun collector on the fifth floor.

She had looked out the TV room window countless nights to see him waving on the sidewalk, holding up a bag of day old donuts or tiger lilies, reciting _Romeo and Juliet_ lines up at her (poorly), grinning ear-to-ear when she'd deign to play along.

"I like that boy," Paula would say sagely every time after he left.

"Of course you do, Mom; he totally kisses up to you," Artemis would retort, her voice higher with youth, and it would be true – honestly, she'd quip at Wally, he was nicer to her mother than he ever was to her.

"Don't be jealous, babe; there's only one Crock for me," he would tell her, kissing her nose until she wrinkled it. "One gorgeous, annoying Crock."

"Thanks," she'd say flatly, and then she'd probably aggressively French him on the fire escape, just to prove a point.

She shakes her head and the memories fade.

"It was a long time ago," she whispers to no one, and slips in her building key, heading for the stairs.

The apartment is just as she remembers, which feels like an odd thing to be thinking, because it's not as though she hasn't been here in _years_ or anything – only a couple of months. She knocks once, softly, on the door before opening it with her key (the oldest one on her keyring, next to the dilapidated keychain of the Cheshire Cat from Disneyland, a birthday present many years ago from Jade), and her mother is right at the end of the short landing, her arms folded over her chest, her stare piercing.

"Hi, Mom," Artemis says coolly, closing the door behind her and shaking the snow out of her hair.

"I haven't heard from you in weeks," Paula scolds her immediately, the same firm and reprimanding tone that Artemis had rolled her eyes at as a teenager. "You could have been dead, for all I knew."

"Come on, Mom; me?" Artemis says as lightly as she can, shedding her coat and leaning down to kiss Paula's forehead. "Never."

"Someday," Paula corrects her darkly, pursing her lips when Artemis straightens again. "I would rather it be later than sooner."

"Me, too," Artemis replies, heading to the kitchen. "I'll make tea."

Paula does nothing to stop her, but neither of them says much as the water rustles in the kettle on the stove. Artemis glances around the walls as though expecting to find something different, but it's all the same: dingy and dreary but impossibly _home_.

The kettle's whistle is shrill and unpleasant and drives an invisible stake through the thick silence. Artemis pours the water into the teapot over the leaves in the strainer and drops the cap on. She sets the pot and two cups on a tray and takes it into the living room, where Paula is already waiting, looking out the window.

They don't speak in the few minutes it takes for the tea to steep. Artemis pours two cups and passes one to Paula, who takes it without a word. Artemis relishes the familiar sting of the heated porcelain on her palm.

"So," Paula finally says after a few moments of silence. She sets her cup down on the saucer in her lap. "Where have you been? And what have you been doing, wherever it is you've been?"

Artemis's mouth thins, but she hides it behind the rim of her teacup as she takes a well-timed sip.

"Just around," she says a touch too defensively. "And I haven't been _doing_ anything."

"Oh, that is rich." Paula scoffs. "So what is this I hear about Tigress and Cheshire killing three guards at LexCorp last week?"

Artemis blanches, but she plays it off in a heartbeat, though her finger tightens slightly around the handle of the cup.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"From your friend Nightwing," Paula answers with no shame.

Artemis almost drops her cup.

"He _came_ here?" she barks. Anger rises in her chest and spreads to her elbows.

Paula nods once. "Just a few days ago. He looked terrible, but I let him in."

"What'd he do, ask you to fake your own death?" Artemis snaps bitterly.

"Even if he had, the decision would be mine, wouldn't it?" Paula retorts with acute sharpness.

It's the closest she will, or ever has, come to shouting. On instinct, Artemis balks.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she mutters, but despite her best efforts, it comes out insincere.

"No, you aren't," Paula says immediately, leaning her elbow on one metal arm of her wheelchair and running her fingers over her forehead and the bridge of her nose. "But you were raised to be unapologetic, so it does not matter. I just hope that you did not forget _honesty_ while your father was in charge."

Artemis winces inwardly, but her untouchable exterior does not falter. She resists the urge to correct her mother by saying that her father had never had the satisfaction of being in charge of her.

"What did Dick want?" she settles for asking instead.

Paula closes her eyes and folds her hands in her lap.

"To apologize," she finally says. "And to tell me he is worried about you."

Artemis slams her cup down with a clatter.

"I don't need people worrying about me," she says as evenly as possible, but still it comes out low, like a threat. "And I don't need _or_ want you talking to him, or anyone _else_ from the Team, actually. My life is none of their business."

"After all these years, I am still just a secret for you to keep?" Paula demands. "There's not a divide between this life and that one, Artemis. Building one makes it so much easier to lose yourself."

Artemis stares at her, hard. Gray hairs are snaking through the black, and her laugh lines are deeper with somberness and age.

Paula had been the last to know about Wally. Artemis had been forced to drop two bombs when she'd knocked on the door at three in the morning on June 21:

"I'm alive," she'd rasped out, shivering with grief she'd been rolling out for everyone, every pair of pitying eyes, every set of slumping shoulders. "But Wally's dead."

It had been the first and last time that she'd spoken those two words and they hadn't been split by "not." She'd kneeled down on the floor and cried into Paula's lap, too anguished to absorb the comfort of her orange hand-lotion smell, her sobs ravaging her whole body. Paula had only stared straight ahead, pale-faced and wide-eyed, her fingers drifting over Artemis's hair out of instinct rather than investment.

"Artemis," her mother tells her now, "my darling girl – you are brave, and strong, and _young_. You don't…" She has to pause to gather her gumption, it seems. "You don't _need_ Wally, though I know it feels as if you do—"

"I know I don't," Artemis interrupts coolly, looking down. "But I _want_ him back. And right now that's good enough."

"Mourn him, Artemis," Paula practically begs her. "He's gone. He is _dead_."

"Then I guess he'll have to live with it until I bring him home," Artemis immediately snaps, her eyes darting up.

Paula looks pained. "Artemis…"

"Mourning is giving up, Mom," Artemis says. "And I'm not ready to do that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I _know_ he's alive, and I'm not just gonna sit here and move on if there's nothing to move on _from_."

"How?" Paula demands. "How can you possibly know this? How can you know that he's alive?"

"Because I…" Artemis's throat sticks, but she fights to resist it. "A few months ago, I… I was in one of the zeta tubes. And I heard him. He said my name."

She keeps her eyes on the floor so she doesn't have to look her mother in the eye, because finally saying the words aloud is rapidly reminding her of why she never wanted to in the first place.

"So I – I started looking, and… and I took a leave of absence, so I could work on my own. Without the – the drama, and the procedure, and the morality, and… you know." She pulls at her fingers in her lap, twisting and untwisting them. "And I saw Doctor Fate, because I figured he'd _know_, and he told me that—" She swallows back the hesitation. "He told me Wally's alive. That he's… somewhere else, some other plane; I don't know how. Or where. Fate channeled him, and he—"

She finally lifts her eyes, looking straight at her mother. The assertion and the honesty are making her queasy, but, to her surprise, in an exhilarating way. Up until now, she hasn't voiced such hope, or, admittedly, such madness. But it feels good in her mouth and in her mind, and it feels good to lay it out in front of her.

"He's out there, Mom," she whispers, inexplicably hushed. "And I'm – I know it's _insane_, but I know how to get him back. Maybe. And maybe's enough."

Paula looks back at her with something in her eyes that Artemis, to her terror, can't decipher. Pity and shock and comprehension and unspeakable love froth in the brown like an ocean.

"Is it?" she finally murmurs. She slips her hand across her lap and onto Artemis's wringing ones.

Artemis nods. "I'm not crazy, Mom."

"Oh, stop it; I know you are not." Paula waves her other hand. "But this… it is a slippery slope, Artemis. I do not like the idea of you going it alone."

"Jade's helping," Artemis offers, not without an air of dryness.

"Ah, yes," Paula says wearily. "How reassuring."

Artemis permits herself a breath of a chuckle and Paula seems to echo it in defeat. The dusk outside is gray and swiftly darkening.

"I just hope…" Paula's eyes stray downwards, and it is clear that she's choosing her words with care. "I hope that the price of finding him will not be you losing yourself."

Artemis pulls on a smile of the most reassuring nature. She clasps Paula's hand in her fingers and jostles it encouragingly and goes back to her tea before it gets too cold.

"It won't be," she says with quiet confidence, though she knows she can't promise it at all.

* * *

On rainy afternoons, Artemis, with her scabbed knees and blistered fingers, would sit on the rug in the living room and try to braid her own hair, blowing her growing bangs out of her face as the television played mutely in front of her (her father hated the sound of it).

"Mom? Dad?" she called once, one bunch of hair knotted in her fingers. "Do superheroes die?"

"They will when I'm through with them," Jade snickered from the couch, lazily painting her toenails purple.

Artemis stuck out her tongue. "I wasn't _asking_ you, Jade."

"Everyone dies, little girl," her father called from down the hall. "Superheroes just do it a little faster."

Paula walked in with a chipped mug in one hand and a pencil behind her ear. Her calloused feet made distinctive claps on the hardwood floor, and her a few strands of her hair were hanging in her face, loose from the bun at the back of her head. She sat cross-legged beside Artemis, her fingers absentmindedly grazing a scar on her calf.

"What are you watching that you would ask?" she inquired, taking a sip.

"The Flash," Artemis replied. She yanked churlishly at her hair and Paula immediately sensed the conflict; her hands found the mat in an instant and deftly went to repairing the damage. Artemis settled, folding her arms across her chest.

"Ha! _That_ coward," her father commented. "What kind of a _hero_ stops his enemies by running away from them?"

"He doesn't run away from them; he runs _at_ them," Artemis huffed as though her father was an idiot. "And _I_ think he's amazing."

"Ya done goofed," Jade drawled. Artemis didn't have the time to retort before Lawrence had stormed into the room. Paula's hands began working a little faster when he came through the doorway.

"Whose side are you on, little girl?" he growled. Artemis kept her eyes on the screen, but inside she was shaking. "You on theirs?"

"No," she said.

"You on ours, then?" Lawrence prodded her. She didn't want to look at him, with his wide frame and his fierce, judgmental eyes, his chiseled jawline that instilled nothing but uneasiness in her.

"Yes, sir," she muttered.

Jade was laughing.

"Good." Lawrence snorted. "Then you can forget all of this superhero crap. They die, Artemis. We kill them. That's our job."

"Lawrence, _please_," Paula finally said, short and firm, looking sharply over her shoulder up at her husband.

They stared each other down for what felt like years, the air between them swollen and ready to burst. Artemis clenched her overalls between her fingers. Jade popped her bubble of gum. The Flash, on the screen, bolted away from the cameras with a wave, a red streak that all but yanked Artemis's heart out of her chest along with it. She wanted to follow the crimson and the wind, to every good place she could find, every pair of eyes she could keep open.

She'd always wondered what it would feel like to go that fast, or at least to be held by someone who went that fast. She'd wondered if bugs would get squished on her face from the speed, or if she'd be able to breathe.

She couldn't breathe right then, with her parents standing on opposite ends of a battlefield seconds away from erupting.

"Fine," Lawrence finally caved. Artemis's shoulders loosened. "Turn that TV off. You're going to bed."

Artemis raised her middle finger to him when he turned his back and Paula immediately swatted her hand down, but didn't scold her.

Artemis glanced up at her mother; she winked.

"It's not so much one hero," Paula whispered so Lawrence wouldn't hear them. "Think of it as legacies. They live on only when we let them, or want them to. You understand?"

Artemis nodded slowly, even though she didn't.

* * *

"Hi. It's me. Thanks a _bunch_ for dropping in on my mom and making my issues _your_ business. Thanks _so_ much for thinking you have a right to step all over my private life like you own it, Dick. Guess what? Just because you read about it on a computer screen five years ago doesn't automatically give you a pass to mess with it. I don't _ever_ want you over at my mom's without me again, you got it? _Good_. Oh, and Merry Christmas; I hope you have a great holiday, ruining lives and annoying people. Don't call me back."

* * *

Artemis had gotten an e-mail from Barry (whose persistence is apparently undeterred by her lack of a functioning cell phone) inviting her over to the Wests' for Christmas Day, and she'd been tempted not to reply. Her response hadn't really mattered, because there hadn't been any discernible way to put into words how little she wanted to go back to that house, with its warm walls and snowy driveway and upstairs bedroom now emptied of clutter and paraphernalia and the t-shirts she'd left on the porch.

_I have plans. Thank you, though, for inviting me. —A_

It's a lie, but she's used to telling lies by now. She doubts they'd be in much of a mood to see her, anyway – she knows from experience that putting too many people connected by one loss in a room together is always going to end in reminiscence and discomfort.

After her tea with her mother, she kisses her forehead good-bye for several moments longer than she normally does and takes too long to close the door. She crunches down the sidewalks, past the shoddily hung Christmas lights and tiny Menorahs in the blacked-out windows, strings of red and green down the fire escapes that do nothing to mask the dreariness of the neighborhood. She flicks her collar up around her neck to shield it from the slicing wind.

She keeps her head bowed against the snow even at the door to her building and has to jiggle her key violently in the lock for several seconds before it works (the cold has been making it stick). She ignores the elevator and takes the stairs, slowly, in a dejected but certain trudge, brushing the snow from her hair with one gloved hand.

She hears Brucely scrabbling on the floor the moment she gets to her door and she smiles wanly to herself, turning the key in and swinging it open. She can hear caroling, far off, maybe several blocks away. It's drowned out by the sound of the trains rattling by.

She closes the door with a distinct _clunk_. Brucely's nudging her knees with his nose in an instant, and she flicks on the light.

_Artemis_.

She glances sharply up at the familiar prod in her mind and violently sucks in a breath to keep from leaping to a defensive position.

Kaldur and M'gann are standing in her living room.

"We're sorry," M'gann blurts out. "It's just, it was cold outside and Kaldur was getting funny looks from some people in the hallway, so we just—"

"We let ourselves in," Kaldur talks over her, as though trying to appear the calmer of the two. "Knowing how could… _unsettle_you, in all likelihood, so we will not discuss it. But—"

"We want you back on the Team," M'gann interrupts. "As soon as possible. Because we—"

"We have been contacted by Dr. Fate," Kaldur says. "He has told us of what he did for you, and what he discovered, and we have decided—"

"If there's even the _tiniest_ chance Wally's out there, we _all_ have an obligation to bring him back," M'gann continues hastily. Each of them is talking with increasing volume and speed as though Artemis will cut them off at any moment. "And we will. We believe you; we do, and—"

"Please, consider our offer, Artemis," Kaldur seems to finish.

M'gann nods and clasps her hands. "_Please_."

Artemis stays crouched on the floor with Brucely, her eyes flicking over them and taking them in. M'gann is dressed in a wine-red peacoat and matching earmuffs, though she is no longer wearing mittens as she once had when they'd been teenagers. Her brown boots go up to the knees of her jeans and her scarf is cream-colored. She's got her green skin on. It makes her still short-cropped hair look as though it's aflame.

Kaldur is dressed a bit more tamely, in his own jeans and a black turtleneck and nothing more, squirming uncomfortably in the snow boots he apparently has to wear. Artemis snorts at the many memories of him being refused service in restaurants due to his constant disregard for the most common policies in the nation.

They're both standing side-by-side in the frail glow of the lamp on the ceiling, with snow clinging to the fabric of their clothes and melting slowly. M'gann's doe eyes are imploring and urgent, and Kaldur's milky ones are inundated with compassion, as always. (It's nice to see them that way again, after months of looking into them to be met with only hollowness, cold and cunning and senseless.)

"I'm…" Artemis's frown is halfway between surprise and apathy. She rises slowly to her feet. "I don't understand."

M'gann and Kaldur glance at each other, and Kaldur nods. M'gann takes a breath and her shoulders rise.

"Doctor Fate visited the Team in the Watchtower a few nights ago," she explains in her careful, ever-clement voice. "He told us that he met you in Giza in November and that he was able to tell you that… that he sensed that Wally was alive somewhere." She's starting to sound choked up. Artemis is reminded, for the first time in a while, of the giddy girl whose auburn hair had swung past her shoulders, who had enchanted everyone she met with cheerfulness and a boundless heart and pine-green freckles. "He… he said that it would be next to impossible to get him back, but we've been talking to a man named Dr. Adam Strange. Conner, Gar, and I visited Rann with him last year. He's an expert in zeta—"

"I know who he is," Artemis says, a bit brusquely.

M'gann blinks widely at her. "Oh. I guess it makes sense that you would. But – oh, Artemis, does it _matter_? We know what you know now." Her expression looks just the slightest bit pained. "Why didn't you… why didn't you _tell_ us? Were you afraid we'd call you crazy?"

"Did you truly believe we could be so shallow?" Kaldur asks gently, the corners of his lips quirking.

Artemis's eyes feel damp. She pinches the bridge of her nose to try to hide them.

"So you—" She gulps. "You're offering to let me back on the Team."

"It is not a question of letting, Artemis. After all, you are the one who chose to take your leave of absence." Kaldur's tone is once again, miraculously, like that of an older brother's, no longer the frigid nuances of a commander.

"It's more a request," M'gann adds. Artemis's eyes flick to her. "We don't… we don't want you to do this by yourself, Artemis; not when we can help you." She tilts her head, her smile growing a bit wobbly from emotion. "We _love_ you. You know that, right?"

Artemis can't bring herself to nod, but she doesn't shake her head, either. Kaldur seems to take it as a sign to step forward and gently take the hand clenching Artemis's nose in his. She lets him, but keeps her eyes on her feet – it's not enough to conceal a sniffle that manages to catch her off-guard.

Kaldur squeezes her hand. His palm is cool and the webbing between it is laced with visible veins in the shaft of light from the lamp. M'gann lets out a soft "oh" at Artemis's crack in composure.

Kaldur shifts closer and gently pulls Artemis into a hug. She stays frozen, but she doesn't push him away. Instead, she closes her eyes and tries to memorize the contact, the caring.

"We will fix this, Artemis. We will heal," Kaldur promises quietly, his arms like a sea around her. He kisses her forehead softly and draws back, smiling with warmth and acceptance and trust and a plethora of other things she feels like she hasn't seen in years. "_Symbiosi_, my sister. Together."

Because Artemis is starved for hope, because a lonely little part of her believes him, she lifts her leaden arms and wraps them loosely around his shoulders and hugs him in silence, counting the frail ticks of the clock on her bedside table. M'gann slips into the embrace, her arms encircling the both of them, her cheek pressing to Artemis's.

_Symbiosi_, M'gann echoes through the mind link. It rings once in the back of Artemis's skull like a bell. _Merry Christmas, Artemis_.

Brucely watches them from the hallway, blinking intermittently.

Artemis knows she should be thinking to herself that this is too easy, or that it will make things too hard, but instead, she thinks of standing on the beach when she was fifteen and watching the sun go down as the rest of the Team splashed around in the purpling waves. She thinks of the sand beneath her toes and M'gann bringing her a popsicle and asking her about her day and sounding like she actually cared.

She had honestly forgotten what it felt like, having someone's arms around her. She hadn't really seen the point in being touched that way, recently, by anyone but Wally.

She fists her fingers in Kaldur's shirt and thinks maybe she can find a point to anything if she looks hard enough.


	7. Chapter 7

**Ah yes, the breather chapter. Many thanks to Lara for looking this over and listening to my brain tempest! And also, Cat is wonderful with her wonderful motivating graphics; Emma is a gem, naturally; and I love Libby and so should you. ****  
**

**Also, writing missions and plotting squads out is hard; I am never doing it again.**

**But hey, I just wanna take a second to say that aside from thanking the usual people, I also want to deeply and sincerely thank everyone who's reviewed and favorited this fic? Every single review I get from you guys keeps me so motivated and confident and just, wow, you guys are really great and nice and I really really hope you're enjoying this and I hope to see you until the end!**

* * *

Artemis is back on the Team in less than a week. Three days, really. Christmas flits by in favor of cleaning the blood from her Tigress costume and waking up before the dawn on the day she's supposed to report to the Watchtower.

It becomes immediately clear the moment she convenes with the rest of the Team for a briefing to reintroduce her that, in her absence, very little has fundamentally changed, but even just standing near them makes it incredibly easy to figure out that, in the six months since July, they've all… moved on. They're all fine, and they're all okay, and their eyes pass over the memorial hologram garden without halting.

It's business as usual: Bart egging innocent Jaime into hijinks, most of which end in Red Tornado supervising them as they scrub their messes out of whatever impossible crevice they've gotten to; Gar and Robin covertly geeking out whenever Superman or Batman enters the room; Mal and Karen devoting their energy evenly between bantering and making out (to Gar's vociferous disgust); Conner and M'gann sending each other a lot of sidelong glances and bashful smiles indicative of a private mind link (and really, Artemis saw _that_ one coming a long time ago); La'gaan and Cassie bragging and joking and high-fiving, often finding themselves roped into Bart and Jaime's schemes; Kaldur trying in vain to keep everyone in line but inevitably resigning to pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering in Atlantean; Batgirl watching it all impartially, masking her indulgent smiles with expertise.

Since they all share the space with the League, they cross paths with them quite a lot. On Artemis's first day back, while she's catching up with M'gann, Batman goes swooping by in a brisk stride and spots her. Even after six years of knowing the guy, Artemis instinctively straightens.

He looks over her for maybe less than a second. When he speaks, he doesn't address her by either of her professional names.

"Good to see you're back," he says gruffly, and then he leaves without waiting for (or showing any signs of caring about) a reply.

Wonder Woman shakes her hand. Superman salutes her. Martian Manhunter inclines his head and smiles. Aquaman claps her on the back.

And then there's Ollie.

"Artemis!" he blubbers out after tackling her in what she can only describe as a bear hug. Of the panda variety. "Good _grief_, kid; it's so good to see you. How _dare_ you fake your own death, young lady; I thought I taught you better – you scared me half to death! And then you drop off the grid before I can even give you a piece of my mind, and a hug – I gotta make you some chili; I've been worried _sick_, out of my mind, how _could_ you? Do _not_ move; I'm not letting you go for at least forty-eight hours, tricky miss."

"All right, Ollie; get a grip," Dinah sighs fondly, prying him off.

Ollie's goatee seems to be both drooping from dejection and bristling from joy, and his eyes are glistening. He blows his nose into a handkerchief from his pocket and it makes a distinct honking noise. Artemis unexpectedly finds herself biting her lip to keep from laughing.

Dinah smiles at her in her usual terrifyingly understanding way, and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Welcome home, Artemis," she says with undeniable love.

Artemis's smile is small, but real, and it makes her whole face feel lighter. She nods in gratitude before turning to a sniffling Ollie.

"I missed you, too, Ol," she says quietly, which just prompts Ollie to start bawling and fling his arms around her again. She pats his back for a few good seconds before resigning herself to returning the gesture. It feels… really nice.

She only spots Barry once, in passing, and she goes back the way she'd come so she can avoid him. He's talking to Batman, who watches her with disapproval, but doesn't give her away.

There are a few spots in the Watchtower she makes sure to never pass through, among them the new souvenir room, the costume cases (Wally's first Kid Flash suit is there, tailored to a short and scrawny mess of limbs, its red goggles bright as the eyes that had once been behind them), and the memorial hologram garden. Once, she makes the mistake of cutting through a hallway that comes out at a spot that gives her a perfect view of Wally's hologram, a flickering ghost with still eyes and an even stiller face; as she stares it down for the first time in months, willing her heart not to quicken, she refuses to let it fool her into any reaction, and she pivots around on one foot and swallows down the bile stinging her throat and never goes there again.

Despite the bumps, the Team welcomes her back with open arms, or, in one case, tightly encircled ones. She's sure that, when Bart finally manages to get a hold of her, she's going to suffocate. His arms seem to fit around her more snugly every time she sees him.

"Why're you in stealth mode?" she asks him in bewilderment when she's gathered enough air to talk again, and he shrugs, looking at the floor. The Kid Flash suit is black and drab-looking.

"Yellow and red only look good on so many people, y'know?" he mumbles back with a stiff smile, and Artemis nods silently, clasping his shoulder without really knowing whether it's to steady him or herself.

They don't really have any missions, not really – apparently villains like to take the holidays off. Artemis's fingers itch for destruction and unsettlement, but she keeps the desire tampered down, even around the ambling fingers of M'gann's finely tuned mind. She realizes very early on that Kaldur isn't aware of her recent… _activities_ with Jade, nor, apparently, is anyone else. (But Batman probably knows, because he's Batman.) It stands to reason that if he _did_ know about any of the things she'd done, bringing her back onto the Team would be his last priority.

It doesn't matter, she supposes. All too soon, it's New Year's.

Kaldur calls all Team members to the Watchtower at one in the morning for what he describes as something they all "need to see." Artemis is the first to get there, and Kaldur merely gives her a dark look, bowing his head. She frowns at him and opens her mouth to prod him, but then M'gann and Conner have entered, and Gar with them, and Mal from his quarters, too, and then the zeta tubes are buzzing and bursting with activity and, within ten minutes, the entire Team is assembled in the yawning mission room, lined up in front of the stars.

"What's going on?" La'gaan finally demands, though not brusquely.

Kaldur sighs through his nose, pulls up a holographic control pad, and taps a button with his thumb. One of the enormous screens pops up above them, playing the evening news.

"Today the world celebrates the New Year as well as the election of Lex Luthor to the coveted position of Secretary General of the United Nations," Cat Grant is saying to the camera with a smile that, for all her charm, seems a tad forced. "Luthor replaces former Secretary General Tseng after last year's debacle with the Reach, who are now a household name since their attempt to destroy our planet. Through resourcefulness and his prestigious company's advanced tech, Luthor easily saved Earth from certain destruction, and today, we hail and honor him as a hero to all – the man responsible for saving the human race and stopping the Reach once and for—"

Conner, apparently unable to take any more, surges forward and slams his fist down on the mute button. It does nothing to alleviate the hateful glowers aimed up at the screen.

Bart's whole face is twisted and red. Kaldur's arms are clenched and M'gann's fists are shaking, pearly at the knuckles. Conner's glare is deep and unblinking, Mal is shaking his head, and Jaime's eyes are fixed on the floor. All of them are radiating spite in varying degrees, but none with such ferocity as Artemis.

In fact, the rest of the Team's attention darts intermittently between the screen and Artemis, who is standing at the front of them all. She has never looked more like her costume's namesake, coiled with rage and ready to pounce, to rip with teeth and claws.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Bart finally says with darkness that doesn't suit him.

"I feel you, hermano," Jaime agrees in the same tone. "Aqualad, isn't… isn't there _anything_ we can do to make sure the world knows what Kid Flash did for them?"

Bart flinches just the slightest bit.

"I am afraid not," Kaldur sighs with a bowed head. "To do so would prompt an investigation of this Team, and the League with it. Aside from which, to go against Lex Luthor would be… _unwise_, considering our already frail public reputation."

"Who cares about reputation?" Cassie demands hotly, pounding her fist into her open palm. "All Luthor did was hand out those egg things; where was _he_ when Wally—?"

"It does not matter," Kaldur interjects sharply. Cassie immediately eschews, as anyone is wont to do when Kaldur takes the tone he is taking now. "As ironic as it may seem, in war, it is unwise to create competitions. Attempting to discredit Luthor would only make this Team seem petty in the eyes of the public, and would ultimately dishonor Kid Flash's memory." His face is drawn. "Regardless… at present, we must be on our guard more than ever before. As Luthor's power grows, so does that of the Light."

"Neptune's _beard_," La'gaan growls vocally. "This is driving me _nuts_! The world needs to know how much of an _eel_ that Luthor is, and if they can't see it, well, it'd be my _pleasure_ to tear him limb from limb instead!"

"I wouldn't recommend it," Conner deadpans. "He probably has insurance."

No one laughs.

_Artemis_, M'gann mentally prods. _Are you okay?_

_I'll kill him_, Artemis thinks, over and over and over. Her eyes are still fixated on the freeze frame of Luthor.

"Team," Kaldur announces. His voice sounds hoarse, and wearier every day. "We are done here."

Everyone nods wanly and mutters amongst themselves and disperses – all except for M'gann, who Artemis can sense lingering behind her. The screens shut off and vanish, leaving behind a familiar view of the blue Earth and the boundless space surrounding it.

Artemis stares blankly out at it. She's not entirely sure how she feels, having Team headquarters so far off from the planet they're supposed to protect. It doesn't look like home anymore; it looks like something to keep an eye on without ever touching. When she'd stood next to a lanky boy who made poor jokes and didn't like to let go of her hand if he could help it, it had looked like a treasure, every wave and mountain and satellite entrusted to her red hands – now she's certain she's too far away from it to ever see it as anything but a marble.

"I remember when he kissed you," M'gann murmurs, plucking her from the pensiveness. "I'd never seen either of you look so happy."

Rather than hurting, Artemis gives a tiny smile.

"You and Conner looked pretty cheery, too," she retorts, folding her arms so her fingers grasp her elbows.

M'gann floats forward to stand beside her, smiling wistfully down at the world.

"You know, it's funny," she says. "Looking at it from this far away, you'd never know—"

"How bad it is?" Artemis finishes. Her voice is cold with cynicism.

But M'gann shakes her head.

"How much everyone… every single person on it matters," M'gann corrects her. Artemis frowns at her, askance, to see that she's hugging herself and looking down at the planet with a shaky smile. "I never got much of that on Mars. We were more of a collective, you know?"

Artemis hums in affirmation, even though she doesn't know, not really.

M'gann's voice breaks. "I miss him so much."

Artemis stands there, immobile, as M'gann's eyes start to well over with large, round tears.

"It's – it's like there's a hole… in my mind," she continues in a whimper. She has to cut herself short because of a sob that doubles her over slightly, but she sniffles in and continues. "It's not as… big now as it was when he—" She rubs two fingers on her left temple and the tears start coming faster. "I-It's like there's this gaping _emptiness_ and all I have to fill it with are memories, but they'll never be enough. He's just _gone_."

"I'm sorry," Artemis whispers, not knowing what else to say.

"I just—" M'gann covers her eyes with her hands and muffles herself, but after a moment, she lowers them so that they're only folded at her mouth, clasped as if in prayer. "I don't know whether to not let myself get my hopes up, or just… let go and believe it, believe everything. There are so many _people_ down there, Artemis, but we lose just _one_ and it's enough to rip us all apart."

"Well, to be fair," Artemis says quietly, "it _was_ Wally."

M'gann doesn't say anything much after that, so they both slip into a silence that, despite its sadness, is comfortable.

After a while, Artemis hears herself say, "It would've been six years today." She chuckles humorlessly. "I didn't even remember his birthday."

M'gann smiles through her tears and reaches over to clasp Artemis's hand. Artemis feels her fingers squeeze M'gann's icy ones appreciatively.

"Well, who knows," M'gann laughs a bit sloppily, clearly still emotional. "Maybe this time next year you'll have another chance. For _both_ of those."

"Yeah, right," Artemis pretends to joke.

She and M'gann stay like that, fingers loosely tangled, for what feels like a long, long time. Artemis absentmindedly runs a hand through her hair. She's surprised to discover that it's past her chin.

She spends the night in one of the spare rooms that night, at M'gann's insistence. Gar bounces around at the foot of her bed and insists on telling her a bedtime story of his own design, involving elephants and rocket ships and sharks who can talk and build airplanes. (Or maybe that's just her sleep-deprived imagination, because she's pretty sure she's out by the time he gets to the rocket ships.)

She's awakened the next morning, at six o'clock, by Kaldur's voice over the tower's intercom.

"Team," he says, and her eyes fly open. She's out of bed and halfway down the hallway before she even hears the full message – she already knows what it is, after years of hearing that single word said in that single tone.

"Report to mission room."

* * *

When she reaches the mission room, it takes every ounce of self-control in her not to stop in her tracks.

Kaldur is in his usual spot, underneath the screens playing international news (and Lex Luthor's face is on every one of them), but it's the young man standing beside him who concerns her. His hands are in the pockets of his lab coat, but she can tell by the hesitant expression on his face that they're only there because he doesn't know what else to do with them. He's clean-shaven and wiry and his eyes are a limpid blue, and it's obvious that his blonde hair had perhaps been combed and kempt an hour or two ago, but is now back to its natural state of slightly rumpled.

She manages to approach them fully from the other end of the room, but her legs feel stiff. Kaldur notices her right away and his posture visibly loosens.

"Artemis." He extends his arm to indicate the man beside him. "This is Dr. Adam Strange. I am not sure if you have met."

"Nope," Artemis says coolly, her eyes fixated on Strange. He fidgets just slightly under her gaze, but she doesn't smirk at the upper hand.

"It's a pleasure," he tells her with a small smile, offering his hand. She takes it and grips it hard when she shakes it, and he winces, drawing back. "Uh… quite a grip you've got there. You're… Tigress, right?"

"That's me," Artemis answers deliberately.

"I'm glad you're here, actually," Strange says. Kaldur glances between them with vague perplexity. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you, if you've got the chance."

Artemis opens her mouth to reply, but Kaldur gently halts her.

"Mission assignment first," he declares, gentle but firm (a combination she's never known anyone else to be capable of accomplishing).

As he says this, the rest of the Team starts to arrive, from zeta tubes and sleeping quarters alike. Artemis doesn't think she'll ever grow accustomed to how overwhelming it is, the gathering of so many people in such a short amount of time – she finds herself briefly aching for the days when there had only been six of them, plus an intrusive Roy, who consistently excused himself by saying he'd typed in the wrong location code.

When they're all finally gathered in a small throng in front of Kaldur (Bart and Jaime elbowing each other and muttering mutinously; Tim swatting Gar's curious hand away from his utility belt), the inactivity-faded screens spring to life again, each one showing a different location across the globe. Artemis stares up at them in surprise. She's still used to the whole "one Team, one mission" mentality that had started before she and Wally had retired. No one else seems fazed, however.

"Your missions are as follows," Kaldur announces, linking his arms behind his back. "Alpha Squad – Lagoon Boy, Beast Boy, and myself – will travel to Santa Prisca to investigate reported Kobra Venom shipments. Beta Squad – Wonder Girl, Kid Flash; you will both travel to Cairo to assist Doctor Fate in his pursuit of Klarion. Gamma Squad – Batgirl, Robin – the Joker has broken out of Arkham and you are to assist Batman in securing his capture. Epsilon Squad – Superboy, Guardian, Bumblebee, Miss Martian; we have received intel that Project Cadmus is building a new facility somewhere in Metropolis; you will follow up on this lead. Tigress, Static, Blue Beetle – you, as Zeta Squad, are to track down and attempt to recruit a group of adolescents calling themselves the Runaways."

Artemis jumps slightly at the unfamiliar name and looks sharply behind her. There's a boy she doesn't initially recognize among the rest of them, his dreadlocks spilling out from underneath a blue baseball cap. He's holding a… manhole cover?

She blinks at him and feels tempted to kick herself. She'd forgotten all about the new kid. Then again, she hadn't exactly given herself much time to get to know him before she'd gone off the Team.

"What?" Static – no, _Virgil_; that's right – exclaims with wide eyes, staring at Kaldur. "Man, we've talked to them a hundred times; team-playing just isn't their style."

Kaldur sighs wearily.

"It is my hope that you and Blue Beetle will be able to sway their decision," he explains. He glances to Artemis with a wry smile. "Aside from which, I believe it is high time Tigress met them."

"Oh, they're a barrel of laughs, trust me," Jaime says sarcastically. "You'll love Tye; he never smiles."

"You got it, boss," Artemis says to Kaldur. It's a private joke between them, a remnant of their time together on the sub. It always makes him grimace, but only with something best described as embarrassment.

"Reconvene at the Watchtower within twelve hours," Kaldur tells them. "Good luck."

The squads all come together and disperse in clumps, heading for the zeta tubes or the hangar. Kaldur gives Artemis a parting nod and leaves, until it's only her, Virgil, Jaime, and Strange left in the room.

"Well, what're you waiting for?" Virgil prompts her with impatience reminiscent of herself in her younger years. "Let's get this show on the road."

"I'll meet you at the zeta tubes in a minute," Artemis replies a bit sharply. "I just need to discuss something with the doc here."

Virgil and Jaime both blink at her and she shoos them with her hand, rolling her eyes and repeating, "I'll be right _there_."

They both linger for a moment, but Jaime finally shrugs and jets off down the hall to the zeta tubes. Virgil sends Artemis one last skeptical glance before following in a jog.

Artemis turns to Strange. Her ribs feel tight.

"I'm sure Nightwing's been keeping you up to date," he says in a mutter.

Artemis nods once.

"He said you have a _hypothesis_." She tilts her head. "That's not much to go on."

Strange looks ruffled, frowning down at her and straightening.

"Well, you don't expect me to just have a solution overnight, do you?" He huffs, then: "I'm sorry. It's just that I care about getting this guy back just as much as you do, so—"

"No, you don't," Artemis says frankly.

He's silent for a moment, and then sighs in defeat.

"Right," he murmurs. He sounds exhausted. "Anyway. Do you have it?"

Artemis reaches into the back pocket of her costume and produces the Father Box. It warbles and beeps at the exposure.

Strange's eyes are wide. "Where were you, uh… _keeping_ that?"

"Trade secret," Artemis replies. She tentatively extends the Father Box to him. "You're sure this is going to help?"

"Yes," Strange affirms, taking it from her with care and ill-concealed fascination. He holds it up to the light, gazing at it with round eyes. "What an incredible piece of technology."

"What's so incredible about it?" Artemis asks with a raised eyebrow.

Strange laughs a little, but not in mocking.

"Are you kidding?" His voice betrays his boyish excitement immediately. "Its capabilities are _magnificent_! Your zeta tubes can help you hop from continent to continent, sure – but this little baby…" He marvels at it, turning it over in his hands. "He can take you across the galaxy, across _dimensions_. The _power_ in this thing is… indescribable. Just. _Wow_."

"So that's why you needed it." Artemis folds her arms, trying not to smirk at how much of a total _nerd_ this guy is. "Not so much for its _actual_ function, but for—"

"The power and sustainability it contains, yes," Strange finishes enthusiastically. "If I can tap into the _source_ of those two things, then… we might be able to get somewhere."

Artemis, on instinct, glances over her shoulder to ensure that they're alone before the leans forward and speaks again.

"And the chronotron tech?" she asks in a hush.

Strange blinks down at her for a moment before his brain seems to catch up with him, and he snaps his fingers.

"I've been looking into that, too," he answers. "It's looking like a good avenue to explore. Gotta say, though – you're lucky this Nightwing guy decided to transport that time machine up here instead of keeping it in the mountain.

Artemis's eyes shift once more to the Father Box.

"So… if I'm understanding this right," she says as professionally and evenly as she can manage. "You're going to combine that with—"

"Tigress!" She jumps and whirls around to see Virgil standing in the hallway leading to the zeta tubes, glaring at her. "Everybody else already deployed; can we _please_ go now? Missions take priority!"

Artemis bites the inside of her cheek and looks back to Strange. He waves a hand at her.

"Kid's right," he tells her with a helpless shrug. "You should go. I'll still be here when you get back; cross my heart."

Artemis says nothing more to him, turning on her heel and running to Virgil. She doesn't miss the annoyed roll of his eyes at her delay, but she keeps her gaze focused straight ahead of her. Jaime is armored up and waiting for them at the line of zeta tubes, tapping his foot.

"So," Artemis says before either of them can get on her case. "Where're we heading?"

Jaime sighs and rubs the back of his head.

"Well, they were last seen in Smallville," he replies. "They're kind of, uh, on a mission to screw over Luthor. Which is dumb, but it's them. So they sabotaged part of LexCorp Farms last night. I mean, I'm _assuming_ they're still around there. Somewhere." He pauses. "I don't see _you_ providing any suggestions, genius!" Another pause. "Well, you can't. Because you're a bug."

"I'm never gonna get used to you doing that." Virgil shakes his head. "But yeah. I got a text from Ed that they're gonna be in Smallville for a while, so if we just follow the sounds of chaos and skateboards, we should find 'em just fine."

"Perfect," Artemis mutters flatly. "All right, boys; let's do this."

To her shock, both of them bow and gesture to the zeta tube.

"Ladies first," they say in unison.

Artemis snorts and elbows the both of them.

"Don't tell your boyfriend you're doing the sync thing with another guy, Blue," she quips.

Jaime scowls at her, but Virgil busts out a clap of laughter.

* * *

To Artemis's admitted surprise, finding these "Runaways" is far easier than she'd imagined. In fact, it only takes her, Jaime, and Virgil about twenty minutes upon arriving in Smallville to track them down.

"Is that a giant golden person made out of light," Artemis deadpans, her head reared skyward to gawk at the enormous being holding what looks like a white van in its expansive palm.

"Tye!" Virgil hollers, waving. "My man! What's happenin', big guy?"

Artemis is frankly horrified when the giant pauses whatever he's doing (they can't see because several _skyscrapers_ are in their way) to turn to them. She immediately crouches, pulling out her crossbow (for some _stupid_ reason, yeah, good choice, Crock; that'll stop him) and aiming.

"Hey, easy," Jaime tells her, waving a hand. "That's one of the guys!"

"Uh," Artemis retorts. "I don't know if he'll fit in the Watchtower."

She hears a distinctly female yell from the left and turns just in time to leap out of the way as a girl with what look to be glowing sonic _booms_ at her disposal fires herself toward Virgil. She cuffs him around the midsection and bowls him over onto the street.

Artemis whirls around to aim at her, but lowers her weapon when she sees that Virgil's laughing.

"Is… that another one of the 'guys?'" she asks dryly.

"Heck yeah she is!" Virgil replies ebulliently.

"_Watashi wa anata o nogashita_!" the girl is in the process of exclaiming with gusto, beaming. "_Watashi-tachi wa_—"

Before she can finish, another boy with wild hair and a yellow scarf drops straight out of the sky in a burst of light. Artemis leaps back with a stricken expression, but none of the four teenagers in front of her take notice, chattering over each other to the point of indistinguishability.

Artemis hears a thunderous noise from behind her and spins around to see that the golden giant is shrinking down to normal size. Within a few moments, a sullen-faced boy with long black hair and a bandana jogs up to join them. The apathy in his eyes dissipates the second he spots Jaime, and the two of them pound fists before yanking each other into a hug.

"Been a while, bro," he comments. Jaime shrugs with clearly feigned smugness.

"Well, y'know, saving the world takes up a lot of my schedule," he replies. His friend shoots his eyes skyward and shoves at his shoulder.

"Where the heck've _you_ been?" the boy with the yellow scarf demands of Virgil, who is finally getting back to his feet after the girl has disengaged.

"I'm – on the Team now," Virgil answers with a blink. "I told you guys that, like, sixteen times."

"Yeah, well, you could've stood to come back for a seventeenth." Only then does it become clear that the boy is joking, as his face splits into a smirk. Virgil loosens visibly with relief.

The girl, after grinning for a few seconds more at the apparently reassembled group of friends, takes notice of Artemis. She raises a hand in a wave.

"Hello!" she greets her cheerfully. "_Dochira sama desuka_?"

Artemis struggles to remember her semester of elementary Japanese.

"Uhh…"

"That's Tigress," Virgil interjects. "Tigress, this is Asami, Eduardo—" He jabs a thumb at the boy with the scarf. "—And Tye." He nods to the boy with Jaime before spreading his arms wide. "The Runaways!"

He says it like he's introducing a vaudeville act. Artemis narrows her eyes – an expression often used to intimidate anyone within range into total silence – and it works on the four boys, but Asami points to her costume with a smile.

"_Tora_," she says, looking proud of herself, and then she gives two enthusiastic thumbs up. "Cool costume."

Artemis blinks. "Thanks."

"So," Tye breaks in, slipping his hands into his pockets. "What d'you guys need?"

Virgil and Jaime glance at each other, and then they both look to Artemis. She scowls at them for conspiring against her, but lets out a breath in defeat.

"We'd…" She tries to think of a way of saying this that they maybe haven't heard before, but she doesn't come up with much. "We'd like you to join the Team."

Eduardo immediately groans enormously, causing Asami to jump.

"How many times do we have to tell you people?" he barks, glowering at her. "We don't roll with any teams but ours. You think we're gonna let you use us and then lose us? You're the ones who screwed Arsenal over in the first place; how do we know you won't just kick us off?"

"Where _is_ Arsenal?" Virgil asks before Artemis can reply. It's probably a good thing, since she was seconds away from unleashing a lot of very annoyed hell on the kid.

Tye scratches the back of his head. "He, uh… he bailed."

"Turns out he wasn't a fan of being a team player, either," Eduardo adds. Artemis absentmindedly notices that whenever he speaks, he always sounds like he's on the brink of shouting, no matter what he's actually saying. "Plus he _sucked_ at boarding. So he went off to do his own thing. Who cares?"

"Come on, Tye; we _need_ you guys," Jaime implores. Tye's already naturally low brow furrows.

Virgil nods vigorously in agreement.

"Plus you'd get free room and board," he adds. "In space. _Space_, you guys! The view is _killer_. And we get tons of missions, and combat training with Black Canary – yeah, _Black Canary_ – and I swear they're _way_ more lenient about following rules than you think they are; otherwise Jaime would be _long_ gone."

"Hey, I am _not_ responsible for what Bart drags me into, okay?" Jaime interjects, crossing his arms. There's a beat. "Oh, _okay_; why don't I just call down a Reach Exterminator and we'll see how you do."

"You guys want revenge on Luthor, right?" Artemis asks the three of them, ignoring Jaime's apparently quite heated debate with his scarab.

Asami, Eduardo, and Tye exchange several looks. Tye is the one who finally shrugs and simply replies, "Yeah."

"So do we," Artemis says.

Jaime stares at her with what she can only assume are raised eyebrows, but doesn't call her out on anything.

The three teenagers consider her. Asami is frowning as though it's taking her a moment to process the information.

"I say, we go!" she finally declares, pounding her fist into her hand and grinning. Tye and Eduardo glance at her out of the corners of their wide eyes. "Team sounds fun. We get rooms!" She looks at the other two encouragingly. "_Rooms_."

"What do you wanna take down Luthor for?" Tye inquires, his eyes narrowed just slightly with suspicion.

Artemis shrugs coolly.

"For a friend," she replies. She's unable to keep the intensity out of her voice. Eduardo, however, looks to be the only one who notices. Realization dawns subtly on his face, but he says nothing to explain it.

"How about this," Jaime offers, gesticulating. All attention is redirected to him. "You guys can have a… a trial run. One month with the Team. If you decide you don't wanna be permanent fixtures, you can op out, but if you wanna stay, you're welcome to. You can just give it a shot and then decide for yourself."

"What've you got to lose?" Virgil finishes, smiling triumphantly.

Asami reacts with almost contagious zeal, pumping her fists in the air. Tye and Eduardo hop away from her, and wisely so, because the exuberance causes her to bounce up on one of her purple force funnels.

"Nothing to lose!" she exclaims, clattering back to the ground. "Yes, yes. We will do it; yes, please, thank you!"

Tye smiles at her with soft fondness that gives him away.

"If Sam's in, I'm in," he declares, stepping over to clasp her hand. She grins at him.

"Tye is in!" She pivots to Eduardo, her fingers still linked with Tye's. "You in, bro?"

Eduardo glares churlishly at the lot of them, slouching slightly. Artemis cocks an eyebrow when he glances furtively over at her.

"Yeah, whatever," he finally mumbles, which causes Asami to cheer.

"We all in," she says officially, as if Artemis, Jaime, and Virgil hadn't deduced that. Her hands go to her hips. Her smile is almost wicked.

"For a trial period," Eduardo appends with pointed enunciation.

Virgil steps forward and slings one of each arm across Asami's and Tye's shoulders. asami reaches over and yanks Eduardo into the chain despite his yelp of protest in Spanish.

"Well… cool!" Jaime says, his face bright. "That was way easier than I thought it'd be. You guys can come check out the Watchtower now."

"Cool," Asami echoes, giving another thumbs-up.

The six trail in a line back to the zeta tubes — the three Runaways actually roll along on their skateboards, but at a slow enough pace — and when they arrive there, Jaime and Virgil go through first, leaving Artemis to quickly type in the guest admission code, multiply it by three, and step aside to admit the new gaggle of prospective team members.

Asami races ahead, staring wide-eyed at the zeta tube as it hums to life and transports her. Tye goes next, saluting Artemis lazily over his shoulder, leaving only her and Eduardo to stand in the dusk behind the general store.

Artemis glances over at Eduardo when he makes no movement to enter the tube.

"Uh, you can go ahead; it won't hurt you," she prods him.

"Hey… this is gonna sound weird, but… have you ever gone by Artemis?" he asks her suddenly, in an uncharacteristically hushed tone.

Artemis bristles, bewildered, but nods.

Eduardo's face tightens into something between a wince and a frown.

"I got a message for you," he says quietly. "From, uh… from 'Wally?'"

Artemis freezes up. It takes her what feels like a long time to conjure up anything resembling a response to _that_.

"What?" she finally rasps, taut and wide-eyed.

Eduardo shakes his head, kicking at a rock until a cloud of dust blooms up around it.

"Sometimes when I'm – y'know, in between places, I hear stuff," he explains. His voice is heavier than it had been moments ago. "People. Lots of people. I've never heard anyone as clear as I heard this guy, though; he was – _loud_. And going fast. Like he was pushing me." He blinks something back and Artemis hears his breath shake. "It was only for a second, but… I dunno. He told me to tell Artemis hi for him. Just hi. Like it was an everyday thing. So yeah, that's it." He lifts his head and looks her in the eye, sounding unsure of whether to feel guilty or not. "Wally says hi."

Silence stretches between them. There are no crickets because of the season, so it's even emptier than the usual beats of Smallville quiet. Eduardo starts to fidget.

"You can go ahead," she hears herself repeat. "It won't hurt you."

Eduardo blinks at her, looking surprised, but grasps her implication fairly quickly.

"Sorry," he mumbles, and then he shoulders past her, stepping into the zeta tube. It announces a recognition number and then he's gone, in a flash of bright white.

Artemis is alone.

* * *

She gets several inquiries into what took her so long when she finally screws up the nerve to return to the Watchtower. Kaldur is in the middle of debriefing the Runaways, smiling warmly at them all as though he's genuinely pleased to see them.

Artemis doesn't stick around for the tour the three of them get, and Jaime and Virgil give a quick and efficient run-down of the events that had transpired before Kaldur releases them. Artemis slips out of the mission room and walks to the training facilities, stripping her mask off and sitting down on a bench press.

She's not sure for how long. What she is sure of is that she thinks about a great many things, among them why she had been momentarily caught off-guard by hearing Wally's name spring from Eduardo, as though its implications were a memory she hadn't carried with her in a long time. She curls and uncurls her fists in her lap and lets her mind wander and waver and every corner it finds is dark, but it doesn't balk; it lingers in each one, and thinks dark things, and then it goes on its way.

Kaldur announces over the Watchtower-wide intercom that the following Team members must report to the mission room immediately: Tigress, Superboy, Miss Martian. Artemis snaps out of the labyrinth and looks to the clock on the wall — it's nearly evening. Everyone must be back from their missions by now.

She frowns to herself, wondering why Kaldur had only requested the original members. She shrugs off the uncertainty and strides back down the empty hallway and into the mission room.

Kaldur, Conner, and M'gann are all gathered around Adam Strange. Along with someone else.

"Oh, you're alive," Artemis says in lieu of announcing her presence professionally, coming to a halt beside Dick. "That's nice to know."

Dick's mouth twitches with amusement and he raises an eyebrow at her over his aviators.

"What, you think I'd miss out on _this_?" he retorts. "No way."

"And what is _this_, exactly?" Artemis demands, turning on Strange for an explanation. He puts his hands up defenselessly.

"It's… it's a formal announcement, kind of," he explains hurriedly.

"I don't understand," M'gann says, looking between Artemis and Strange with a puzzled crinkle over her nose. "What's going on?"

"Get to the point, Strange," Conner adds gruffly, but Kaldur puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Please, my friend, be patient," he says. Conner grumbles, but quiets.

Strange, when he notices that all eyes are on him, clears his throat and flushes at the ears.

"Well, the fact of the matter is that… Nightwing has been in contact with me since July of last year," he says. "Following the 'ceasing' of one Kid Flash."

Something starts to dawn on M'gann's face. Conner's, too — his blue eyes are wide, and his expression is beginning to unravel into one of shock and comprehension.

"I've been conducting my own research and investigation into what happened," Strange continues. "The second I heard about it, I knew something was fishy. So I've been immersing myself in… trying to figure out what exactly that was. I'm not going to beat around the bush here. In short…"

He breathes in deeply as if to steady himself for what he's about to reveal.

"In short," he repeats, and then looks at all of them. "I think I might… _might_… be close to developing a machine that can…"

"No," M'gann whispers in disbelief, her hands flying to her mouth.

"That _will_," Strange corrects himself, and then a small smile quirks over his face, and he starts to sound breathless. "If all goes well… bring him back."

The only thing that Artemis really registers after that is the sound of M'gann's tearful, unstoppably elated laughter. She feels Dick's hand on her shoulder and, though her eyes don't move from the point in space on which they're fixed, she leans into him, and maybe her face starts to wobble with exhilaration, too. She's too dazed with disbelief to be sure.

"Again, this is all tentative," Strange warns them, but the grin on his face is betraying him. "It's… it's going to take a long time. Possibly months. I don't want to reveal too much yet; it… could get us ahead of ourselves. But from this point on, you'll all be kept updated with everything I find."

"What is our job going to be?" Kaldur asks. His voice sounds off-kilter with emotion. "Is there anything we can do to assist?"

Strange smiles wryly.

"Uh, you can make me coffee," he jokes, and then, more seriously: "And you can wait."

Artemis is sure, when M'gann flings her arms around her and shrieks with joy, that she could gladly wait a hundred years or more if it meant breathing again. She looks over the top of M'gann's head and catches Dick's eye.

They nod to each other with twin shaky smiles. Kaldur claps Strange on the back, and congratulates him, and thanks him.

Artemis wishes Tigress would vanish for a moment, just so she could do all of the unabashed rejoicing she wants to.


	8. Chapter 8

**It's really ironic that I recently got an anon asking me if I'd ever cried while writing this fic and I confidently answered "HAHA, NO, ARE YOU KIDDING," and then writing the first scene of this chapter destroyed me as a person and had me sobbing quietly at Izzy over Skype.**

**To be fair, the first bit is the only decent one in here – this is one of those PLOT chapters, y'know? I hate those. Plus I've been writing inconsolable Artemis angst for so long that I think I'm starting to lose my touch AND my taste for it.**

**The reviews on the last chapter were so nice and helpful and encouraging and made me clutch my face like a moron, basically. You guys are the best. :)**

* * *

And, just like that, everything starts to slow down.

It's not the same near-standstill it had been over the summer, though. It's like Artemis has the time to fall backwards and never have to worry about hitting the ground, so she has all the time in the world for feeling her balance leave her, and all the time in the world for letting go.

Dick doesn't rejoin the Team, much to Artemis's sinking (unexpected) disappointment.

"I only decided to poke my head in to see your faces," he explains to her over a cup of coffee one weekend. "When Strange told you, I mean. _Totally_ worth it. But there are still some threads I wanna tie up. Plus, this solo thing's got… perks. Like not being stressful, not having to worry about getting your methods questioned, not having to report to a space station every morning at five…"

Artemis snorts and takes a bite of her croissant and doesn't argue with him. As she understands, Zatanna's been using her League influence to track Dick wherever he goes, so at least one of them has the patience required to keep an eye on him.

Mary calls her cell phone halfway through January and she answers it. Kaldur had advised her against announcing Strange's findings to anyone but the five of them who had been there when he'd unveiled them, so that if things don't go as planned, only that many hearts will wind up cracked down the middle. It's a stupid, but pragmatic, rule.

She finds herself wondering as she bites her tongue while on the phone if this is how Wally had felt when she'd been "dead" – heavy with guilt, taut with restraint, tight-jawed with caution. She'd always had more of a taste for lying than he had, but that doesn't make withholding solace from his shattered mother any more bearable.

"It feels like it's been so long, sweetheart," Mary says. The cheer in her voice that had once seemed so natural is now the most forced and half-hearted thing Artemis has ever heard. "Have… have you been holding up all right? When Rudy and I found that box on the porch, we thought… oh, I don't know." She tries to produce a brisk sigh but it comes out sounding like a reigned-in sob. "Did you do anything nice for Christmas?"

Artemis shakes her head, keeping her voice soft – a part of her is afraid that if she talks too loudly, it might break Mary into pieces.

"Not really," she answers. "Brucely and I just kinda had a night in."

Mary's laugh is brittle and goes on for too long.

"That's nice to hear," she says. "We, ah… oh, you know, it was just another West clan gathering out here. Rudy made me p-promise not to take out the photo albums."

Artemis hates herself for not knowing what to say.

"Anyway, we… it's getting better, you know? Um…" Mary's voice is shaking. Artemis can visualize her fingers hovering at her mouth as if they'll hold back the tempest of grief threatening to tear out of her. "We're all right. I still haven't gotten up the guts to take his things down to the GoodWill, though. I keep getting so close to doing it, and then I… I just break down; I don't know. I can't just throw his favorite books away, and that limited edition model of the Enterprise, and—you know? He'd… he'd never forgive me."

"Yeah," Artemis whispers. "Yeah, I know."

She pulls in a breath.

"Do you… want me to take some of it?" she asks unsurely. She doesn't even know if it's her place to offer, especially after she'd dumped all of it on their porch, made it their problem. "I'll take good care of it. I promise. Just if you wanna – I don't know."

She gestures lamely at nothing.

But when Mary speaks again, Artemis can hear the glistening smile in her voice, and the already wobbling presence of tears is no longer so overpowering.

"I don't see why not," she replies warmly. "I'm sure you'd – be better at keeping it together around them than I am. It's just…"

Artemis listens, helplessly, as Mary chokes something back and then finally breaks down, her small sobs muffled in the speaker, probably behind her hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Mary finally blurts out. "I just hear your voice and I keep thinking maybe he's going to come over and grab the phone, or that he's writing a paper and just can't talk right now—"

"I know," Artemis repeats with every ounce of gentleness in her. But she doesn't, and she knows she doesn't, and it only makes her feel worse. "Listen – I can come pick some things up this weekend, if you want."

There's a short drop of quiet as Mary composes herself again.

"Oh, yes, sweetheart," Mary tells her with a semblance genuine happiness. "We would love that. It'll be so nice to see you. So nice."

"Yeah," Artemis agrees. "It's been way too long."

"It has," Mary murmurs, and not for the first time, Artemis finds herself wishing she could stretch her arms through the phone and let them do the hugging they ache to.

But she doubts she deserves such loving honesty of contact anyway.

* * *

She's called to the Watchtower on January 18 for routine mission deployment. Kaldur assigns the squads with business-like quickness, and Artemis is put into Gamma Squad with Barbara and Cassie.

"You three are to follow a lead we have received on Queen Bee," Kaldur tells them. "There have been sightings reported in a secluded area of the Bialyan desert, paired with periodic power surges that the League has been monitoring. Reconnaissance only."

"When are you gonna learn that that jinxes it?" Artemis asks him dryly, and he pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Avoiding any kind of combustion would be _greatly_ appreciated," he sighs.

"You got it, chief!" Cassie salutes him. "The ultimate stealth squad, reporting for duty!"

"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Barbara deadpans, but she's smiling. "We'll take my Batplane; she's still a prototype, but she runs like a dream."

"Pass," Cassie scoffs, pulling a face. "Like I'd ever skip a chance to fly! You wimps enjoy your plane."

Barbara rolls her eyes and Artemis snorts.

Barbara's Batplane is practically an exact replica of Batman's, albeit a bit more sleek and slender and quick. She keeps it at the warehouse in Blüdhaven since it isn't yet calibrated for outer space travel, so the three of them zeta there in order to retrieve it. Artemis forces herself to ignore the stench of the bay and the rusting tugboats, forces herself not to dwell on the four jinxing words she'd flippantly said to Wally, almost a year ago now, instead of the three she should have.

Artemis buckles into the co-pilot's seat and gives Cassie a lazy salute when they take off – the girl flies beside the plane instead of in it, fists outstretched in front of her, and laughs with exhilaration at the fresh air and spring sunlight. She twirls through the air, backflips, and whoops.

"I'm so jealous of her," Barbara says jokingly. Her smile is content as she watches the open sky in front of them, as the buildings below them fall farther and farther away. "I'd _kill_ to be able to fly."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Artemis mutters, her eyes wandering. Bialya's a good hour away.

She settles down into her seat and smirks privately at the memory of Barbara in her more wiry years, when she'd just been_Babs_, Dick Grayson's quiet but acutely witty best friend who never noticed how longingly he would look at her.

When they land, about five clicks from the hotspot where Kaldur had told them the sightings and energy readings had occurred, Cassie shakes sand out of her hair and fingernails and Barbara takes charge.

The hotspot turns out to be a single-story building resembling a complex, similar to the one Cassie and Barbara had encountered with M'gann and Karen the past February. It's crawling with guards and Artemis is pretty sure she spots Tuppence Terror's distinctive blonde ponytail go slicing around a corner.

"Okay," Barbara whispers after they've tested the communicators in their ears. "Tigress, you're on the east wall; WG, west; I'll take the south one."

"And the north?" Cassie asks, pulling her lasso out.

Barbara grimaces. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It looks like the only thing there is some kind of tank."

"Well, whatever," Artemis mutters, pulling out her crossbow just in case. "If our only job is to stare at them walking around in circles, we can probably afford to switch up posts if things get boring."

"Ugh, don't use that word; it's bad luck," Cassie groans under her breath.

She taps her chest and her costume slips into stealth mode. Artemis does the same.

"Ooh!" Cassie exclaims, beaming. "Now you're a panther!"

"Uh-huh." Artemis smirks before slipping away toward her sector. "Later, ladies."

She comes to a stop behind a dune and pokes her head over the top of it, just barely. The ears of her mask would no doubt give her away if they weren't colored black by the stealth setting.

She watches, eerily still, as two guards stride in opposite directions. Her eyes rove over the concrete walls – it seems just militaristic enough for Queen Bee, she thinks dryly; very homey – for any hint of information, but she comes across none.

Her fingers curl over the trigger of her crossbow slightly and her gloves make a squeaking sound. She keeps her mind forcibly seated only at where she is right now, refusing to let it wander to what the sand looks like when it's ablaze under the sunlight, when black-booted feet are kicking it up with impossible speed, when it crusts around her eyelids as she clings to a stranger.

Out of absolutely nowhere, then, there's a hand gripping her free arm from behind and twisting it against her spine. She gasps, jerking back, immediately disgusted with herself for letting her guard down. The fingers tightening against her flesh are so cold they burn her.

"Well," her captor leers into her ear. "What do we have here?"

Artemis switches to autopilot. She swiftly wrenches herself forward and flings her elbow back until it collides into a face made of something harder than flesh. The hands leave her arms and a yelp shoots into the air.

"Man, Artemis; I was just messing around!" the same voice whines.

Artemis stiffens with recognition and whirls around.

"_Cameron_?" she says, bewildered.

Sure enough, Cameron Mahkent is doubled over in front of her, clutching his jaw where she'd hit him. He's in his ice form, every contour of his angular face catching and mirroring the desert moon.

"In the flesh," he replies. "Or ice, or… whatever."

"What are you doing here?" She forces herself to sound callous.

"Uh, I'm a _bad_ guy, smart one," he bites back, finally straightening with a roll of his eyes. His sharp fingers scrape lightly against his swollen cheek. "I'm workin' with Tommy and Tuppence again. Muscle for Queen Bee. Fun times."

He briefly drops the smug front.

"So, uh…" He clears his throat. "I thought you were, like… dead. What happened with that?"

"Well, y'see, Cam, as it turns out, I _faked_ it so I could go undercover." Artemis scowls at him. "And in case you hadn't notice by my costume? I was Tigress. The whole time. Great observational skills."

"For real?" Cameron exclaims, but he doesn't sound astonished; he sounds _angry_. "Why would—Why would you _do_ that? To your _mom_; are you _serious_? Jeez. And that dumb boyfriend of yours? Or was that clown in on it?"

"That _clown_," Artemis snaps, "is no longer with us."

Cameron's face immediately looks stricken.

"Oh," he mumbles. "I'm… I forgot about that."

"That implies you knew," Artemis says with narrowed eyes.

"Duh I did! Jade told me." He shrugs, scratching his head. "Listen… Artemis… I just wanna say I'm—"

"Sorry?" Artemis finishes for him. "Get in line."

Cameron grimaces.

"No, it's…" He kicks at the sand, looking down instead of at her. "I dunno, I guess I just wanted to remind you that you'll be okay. You've got an awesome life and a lot to live for, and you're tough. So I just, like… I hope you're not gonna get hung up on this, y'know?"

"Hung up," she repeats disbelievingly, and then, in a shout, "_Hung up_?!"

"Okay, okay, sorry for caring!" He puts his fearsome, glacial hands up in defeat and pulls a face like he can't believe the words he's saying. "I just care, Artemis. And no offense, but you look _terrible_. And you're being mean, but, like, _genuinely_ mean, not charming Artemis mean. Like being mean is normal for you now, or something."

"Your point being?" she asks frigidly.

He throws his head back and groans at having to elaborate.

"I'm just… suggesting that the whole Wally thing is screwing you up," he expounds, wincing as if preparing himself for being punched. "The way it shouldn't be. I just – ah, whatever, Artemis; I just want you to come out okay and like, you're strong enough to get past his. You've got like fifty people in your corner. I guess I just wanted to remind you. Because I care. It's gross."

He pauses, considering something, and then looks her in the eye with a sharp and wicked smile.

"You wanna fight?" he asks.

She stares silently at him for a moment, then shrugs.

"Sure," she replies, and then her lips twitch daringly. "I'm gonna pound you, though."

"Bring it, Goldilocks," he goads her, putting up his fists.

She smirks, sharply, and charges.

A part of her feels like a kid again, wrestling with the loud-mouthed wisp of a boy who lived down the block, hollering out foul words just for the sake of feeling like a grown-up. She punches Cameron and he knocks her down and she kicks him and he grabs her by the hair and there are no rules, no dignity; only winning.

She takes him down with ease, as she always has.

"Artemis!" Barbara's voice in her communicator. "Our cover's blown; we gotta go. _Now_!"

Artemis has Cameron pinned and winded. She grins triumphantly down at him and he rolls his eyes, his limbs splayed.

"You're never gonna learn, are you?" she jibes.

"Nah," he drawls back, and then his jagged face seems to soften, in a way only she recognizes. "See you around, Artemis."

Artemis clambers swiftly off of him and sprints away over the sand without looking back. The sound of security alarms wails through the too-open air, egging her on, until she reconnects with Cassie and Barbara behind the dune where they'd left Sphere.

Barbara talks professionally for the whole flight back, about how Queen Bee is almost certainly there and she had seen a boom tube and Cassie had spotted what looked like Apokalyptian tech in a tunnel but neither of them had gotten the time to investigate further before Cassie had accidentally tripped the alarm. Artemis tunes out most of it and thinks about what Cameron had told her.

She tries, very hard, to remember what Wally's arms had felt like around her. But she can't.

She decides after debriefing that she'll go to Zatanna's for dinner.

* * *

After that, there's only time. It rolls past her, under her, above her, and through her like the ambling buses she sees downtown, and it does not clatter or clamor. It moves with her and at her behest; its stroll is at her convenience, and its seconds are hers to pluck out of the sunnier days, and she loves it.

She starts to take up babysitting duties with Lian more and more. She often picks her up at Jade and Roy's and then hauls her back to her own apartment, since Jade apparently doesn't trust her with the décor; she spends these spring afternoons taking Lian to parks, busying herself with baking cookies or _bánh flan_, brushing the flour from her cheeks and tucking her ever-lengthening hair back with a tired green bandana that had once been her mother's. Bart comes zipping by sometimes, just because his enthusiasm for infants and toddlers is only rivaled by his enthusiasm for Chicken Whizees, and he flits around her in the kitchen, chattering and snickering and stealing unwarranted samples.

"You literally just whacked my hand with a wooden spoon," he whines at her once, round-eyed and aghast. "I knew Tigress was cold, but not _this_ cold!"

"Will you _please_ go watch the baby?" she barks back good-naturedly, wagging the spoon at him. "If she manages to get to the street level by fire escape _one more time_ when you're supposed to be with her, Bart, I swear…"

But Lian isn't exactly a baby anymore. Now just over a year a year old, she's learned to walk and somersault and use a very selective arsenal of words (namely "mama," "dada," "sai," and "juice"). She totters around Artemis's apartment and giggles whenever "Boose-ly" accosts her with enthusiastic barks and slobbery kisses; she clings to "Bot"'s pants leg whenever he tries to leave and claps her hands when he uses his super-speed indoors and finds himself on the receiving end of Artemis's yelling; she constantly begs "Otter" to hold her just so she can toy with the blonde locks that she loves.

And honestly, Artemis does not hesitate to inwardly brag about how adept she becomes at holding a chortling baby in one arm and cooking with the other.

Really, though, even when Lian _isn't_ there (and making Artemis have to physically bit her lip to keep herself from "aww"ing), Bart starts to resemble some kind of light fixture, always present in some corner of another, chewing loudly and asking for help with his English homework and vocally discussing every single thing he sees on the news. Artemis doesn't mind. He falls asleep on her couch on Friday nights and she tosses a blanket over him and makes him piles of pancakes in the morning, and it doesn't hurt to have so much food in her fridge again.

Dinah convinces her to take up combat training instruction at the Watchtower again. Artemis whips the freshmen into shape more than ever before, especially the Runaway trio, who, it turns out, never do vocalize their decision on whether or not to remain on the Team – they just sort of stay there, casually, slouching and joking.

Asami seems to think that, because Artemis accidentally walks in on her and Tye making out one evening, Artemis is the go-to person for relationship advice. She splutters at her in a disjointed mélange of Japanese and English – an endless string of "Boys are so stupid!" and "_Watashi wa subete no shōnen ga kirai!_" – and demands aggressive combat lessons so she doesn't wind up crying. Artemis doesn't do much except agree with her and offer to exact castration upon whatever male party is vexing her, but apparently it helps, because Asami and Tye continue to be inseparable, with their gross matching headbands and their gross matching smiles and their gross hands going to gross places that Artemis can't unsee.

She and Zatanna have lunch every weekend and, on Valentine's Day, just when Artemis's sore and bitter chest is about to reach the point of snapping violently in two, Zatanna calls her up and aggressively proposes a girl's night out and Artemis spends the star-sprinkled February night giving bank robbers and muggers bloody noses, nursing a split lip with an ice pack and laughing with Zatanna at their matching black eyes and torn costumes and arguable mental issues (since they deal with their emotions by causing harm to others, and all).

"Any update with Dick?" Artemis asks through a mouthful of Moose Tracks.

Zatanna snorts.

"Is there ever?" She shrugs. "I don't know. He comes over and sometimes his clothes wind up on the floor; y'know, standard us."

"Uh-huh," Artemis says dryly. "Sounds very healthy. Standard you."

"'Healthy?' _Such_ an understatement." Zatanna throws her gloved hands up and looks skyward. "Punish her, universe, for that understatement."

"Whatever, Tan; the only person the universe is punishing here is _you_, because you're stuck with _him_."

Artemis laughs, and she tampers down the lurching twinges between her ribs at every sorrow-sore memory of chortling with Zatanna over their respective boyfriends, of flippantly talking about love and what it meant and whether it was necessary and how much of it Artemis had in her unexpectedly large heart for a boy whose freckles were fading with the seasons.

One night, she and M'gann decide to paint their toenails, the way they had when they'd been teenagers. M'gann makes sure Gar is in bed before she shifts her hair to a length Artemis hasn't seen in years, and she asks Artemis to braid it as she carefully colors her wiggling toes a shade of bright cyan.

Conner and Artemis visit the ruins of Mount Justice, clambering up onto the chunks of charred rock and watching the new grass grow from between them, staring out over the blue waters of the ocean and _remembering_. The breeze combs through Artemis's hair and awakens her skin and the remembering is as painful as it always is, and she probably cries a little, but Conner's there to awkwardly pat her shoulder and comment on how pretty the sky is in an effort to feel better, so she only cries for a little while.

Kaldur finally teaches her how to swim, and not just to survive, but to relax. She hates the first few days because, let's face it, she and water are mortal enemies and this isn't the first time Kaldur has tried to remedy her utterly destroyed relationship with anything from the slightest puddle to the largest ocean, but she pretends that it's working and makes herself laugh at La'gaan's terrible water puns and claps a hand to her forehead in utter exasperation when neither of them are looking.

She goes for a run on a March morning and only has to stop to gulp the tears down twice. A hundred jogging people go breezing past her, and as the wind rustles through the green leaves of the trees, she thinks she can hear Wally, obnoxiously far ahead of her.

"_Hurry _up_, Artemis; it's not like I've got all day_!"

"_Can you just shut up and wait for five seconds, Wally?_"

"_Babe, for you, forever_."

"_Gross. You're carrying me home_."

* * *

The mission comes in the middle of March.

Most of the ones before it are throwaway – stop the Joker from producing exploding pies, prevent Poison Ivy from turning downtown New York into the set of _A Troll in Central Park_, make sure Belle Reve keeps its mass breakouts at a nice, even zero – and, if Artemis is being honest, when she's assigned this one, it sounds like a throwaway, too.

It's simple. Dr. Fate has been chasing after Klarion since November, when the horn-haired punk stole a trinket called the Amulet of Anubis from Fate's secret arsenal in the desert. The chase has taken the two Lords all over the majority of Egypt and parts of Saudi Arabia, and has found little fruition on Fate's part.

Artemis, alone, is assigned to follow a lead on Klarion's whereabouts – which are, apparently, somewhere on the island of Roanoke. His stomping grounds.

"Doctor Fate will rendez-vous there with you," Kaldur explains. "The mission is simple. Find out what Klarion is plotting, and what he plans to do with the Amulet. Since you will be on your own, engaging him in contact is discouraged. Do you understand?"

"Yes, boss," Artemis replies. She winks. Kaldur rolls his eyes.

"I look forward to the day when that joke loses its charm for you as it has for me," he teases her, and she clicks her tongue when she salutes him, heading for the zeta tubes.

The forested area outside of Roanoke is familiar to her – it had been where Klarion had conspired with the rest of the Light to split the Earth into two universes and rid each of them of either adults or children. The sky, though deep in night by the time she arrives, looks purple to her. The trees are black and barren. Her boots crunch into the dead leaves on the dirt path.

There's no sign of Klarion – or Fate, as a matter of fact. Artemis can't help frowning. As obnoxious and self-absorbed as he is, Fate values punctuality as much as he values order itself.

She pulls out her crossbow.

Just then, she hears a giggle behind her, and a noise like a shadow rustling through the trees. She keeps her body loose but still poised, and doesn't flinch at the sound.

"Curiosity killed the cat; satisfaction brought it back," a voice chants, all around her. "Curiosity killed the cat; satisfaction brought it—"

"Nice to see you, too, Klarion," Artemis calls into the open air.

"You interrupted me!" She jerks around sharply to see that Klarion, skinny and ashen-skinned and wearing his typical dapper black suit, is floating just behind her. She aims between his eyes, but doesn't fire. "That's _rude_, kitty. Hey, hey, d'you know where that old geezer Fate is?"

"Gee, I might have to check my tracker," she bites back sarcastically. Klarion slips out of sight as though he hadn't been there at all and she stiffens just slightly, stepping back, keeping her body in a roundabout motion so she has all sides of her covered.

"You want the Amulet, don't you?" Klarion's voice demands from an indistinguishable place. "Too bad!"

"It's not nice to steal things that aren't yours," Artemis mutters, keeping her crossbow steady.

"What do you want it for?" Klarion ignores what she'd said. "Don't tell me it's so you can contact that dumb boyfriend. Gross! Pathetic! And after all the trouble Lex had to go through to get rid of him!"

Artemis freezes in her tracks. The air around her seems to chill. Just then, Klarion appears before her, stroking Teekl as she lies on one of his arms and blinks slowly with her red eyes at the world in front of her. Artemis feels like an insect pinned to a board, squirming and struggling for nothing.

She lowers the crossbow.

"_What_?" she finally whispers, dangerously, deliberately.

Klarion, however, is not fazed in the slightest.

"Ohoho_ho_! Don't tell me! You didn't know?" he coos with relish. His sentences are peppered with juvenile giggles that make Artemis feel all at once nauseous but white-blooded with rage. "He _knew_ about that last MFD, dummy! You think Lex Luthor would've made a mistake like that? Puh-_lease_."

Artemis, on feral instinct, swings at him, but he warps instantly away in a puff of smoke, materializing again in seconds, too high over her head for her to reach. She fumbles for her crossbow to aim properly again, but her breath is shallow and quickening and is making it difficult for her to concentrate on anything but the black and ugly words spilling from his gray, moon-sliver mouth.

"The Light was ready to save the planet, sure! But we don't do anything for free." He leers, and Teekl's expression matches. "He knew those ri_dic_ulous speedsters would have the _capability_ to shut one down, but only after pushing themselves so hard it'd overload their weak little hearts. And if the Justice League lost not just the Flash, but the most powerful speedster in history along with him? It'd be super for us! But then stupid Kid Flash had to show up and throw it all off, because the whole plan had only counted on _two_ speedsters! Killjoy!" He cackles. "But I guess it worked out okay, didn't it? Ol' Lexie got rid of a useless brat who was just slowing everyone down _and_ got all the credit for what he did to save all you party poopers. Everybody wins! Y'know, except you and your little Team. But winning wouldn't really exist if everybody got to do it!"

He must have noticed that, as his monologue went on, Artemis had begun to grow increasingly tried for composure, and that, by the end, she's rigid but somehow still shaking, every inch of her an earthquake, overwhelming her second by second with an inconsolable rage.

"How's _that_ make you feel, little kitty?" he teases her gleefully, taking joy in her silent breakdown. "Hee hee!"

The noise Artemis makes when she lunges up at his dangling legs starts out as a predatory growl and erupts into a bellow that may as well, with all of its crippling intensity, tear her skin off of her. Klarion is gone, hopping backwards into a swirling black and red portal that closes around his tailcoats, before she even goes silent.

She falls on all fours when her arms find nothing to strangle or break, refusing to blink her fury-widened eyes. Her vision blurs violently with each erratic throb of her heart. The thundering need in her chest to rip something apart, _anything_, is unstoppable.

She grinds her teeth against each other, curls her fingers into the dirt, and _roars_.

* * *

"Hello?"

"Nightwing. Hi. This is Adam Strange."

"Heh. What's up, doc? …What, not even a _fake_ laugh for my bad joke? I'm crushed."

"I'm sorry. Guess I'm not really in a joking mood. It's, uh… it's about this zetatron boom tube. It's about the plan I told you about for… getting your friend back."

"…Go on."

"I think… I don't really know how else to say this. I think we may have a problem."


	9. Chapter 9

**Well, this is it. This is where what happened to Wally and how he's alive is, uh… partially explained. I'm so nervous about this chapter that I basically can't breathe, because the legitimacy of this entire fic is riding on this bullshit explanation, you know? I've been agonizing over posting it for _literally days_, and I've been working it out in my head since the day after the episode aired, to be honest. I considered several different possibilities before I settled on the one I'm using. I'm no good at science or logic or anything like that, so I just hope that, uh, at this point you're all too hooked to quit now. (I'm joking. You are totally allowed.)**

**Many, many thanks to Izzy and Annica for test-reading the explanation scene and keeping me confident enough to draw this chapter to its full close. And, of course, Libby, my forever girl, and Emma, my forever redhead, have been amazing. And so have all of _you_ guys who've been leaving such amazing reviews; like damn. Every single word keeps me motivated. :3**

**This chapter is also very info/action-heavy and clocks in at just slightly over 8,000 words, so uh, abandon all hope ye who enter here, or whatever.**

**All right; I'll shut up. Here goes nothing!**

* * *

Every part of her is numb.

There is no rage, no despondency, no bitterness or conviction, but she's sure that if something were to find its way into her hands right now, she would not hesitate to break it in half.

Her bones alternate between a senseless tingling and a stiffness that sends spurts of barely-felt pain through them. Every inch of her is fraught no longer with a rage like none she has ever felt but now with an emptiness she can't even begin to fathom.

Her breath is coming in and out, but it's hollow, and it carries no motivation other than instinct. She's still standing, walking, running, turning; air is still entering and leaving her at uneven intervals, but none of it draws any focus or concentration from her, because the only thing her mind can wrap itself around, black and chalky and burbling, is Lex Luthor's name.

She imagines Wally running until he can't breathe anymore, feeling the energy from the MFD rip through the parts of his skin she used to know by heart; she imagines his limbs being pumped by the same unstoppable idea that had prompted him to blow himself up at the bright-eyed age of thirteen; she imagines him thinking as Barry's hand moved through him that he was doing something worthwhile, and unexpected, and brave; and she imagines Lex Luthor, sitting in his chair, watching it all on the screen and seeing him as nothing more than an inconvenience.

She doesn't wait for Fate. She doesn't even think to question where he is. Her boots grind into the dirt the same way her teeth had ground into her tongue only moments ago. She walks back to the Roanoke zeta tube with her limbs ramrod straight, slicing through the dark night air without mercy. Her heart is thudding dully like a bruise that she's sick of having.

It doesn't stop.

The trees around her are still black and barren and they claw up into the unnaturally violet sky, tearing the holes that she knows as the stars. Not for the first time, she looks up at them and wonders if maybe that's where Wally wound up, a burning ball of energy light years and light years away.

Her fists clench so tightly that they shake, and that her fingernails dig into the skin of her palms. It doesn't hurt, because she can't feel anything anymore.

There's no need for any kind of physical sensation when she can count on fury to drive her, blanched, buzzing, engulfing, and neverending. She's been angry before – it's her fallback, really. But it hardly compares to the seething energy coursing in throbs through her joints and her eardrums.

She steps into the zeta tube and closes her eyes, and it says her name: _Tigress_.

Gone are the recent memories of finding charred remnants of souvenirs under the rubble of Mount Justice with Conner; gone are the memories of laughing with M'gann until three in the morning and not once considering that Wally might never come home; gone, _gone_ is the knowledge that she's starting to get better.

She's not really expecting anything, not in the desperate way she had months ago, when the zeta tube whirs to life. She cherishes the sensation it brings, the feeling of dissolving, and something in the back of her mind registers that she's in there too long, but before she can react, something is pressing into her shoulder blades.

She hears a voice. It skirts up her spine and holds her up and covets her and says, with clarity that knocks the breath out of her, "_Babe, I'm sorry_."

Solid ground juts up beneath her feet and she rematerializes in the Watchtower standing utterly still. And something inside of her rears its head back and shatters.

Not caring who else is there, she whirls back around to the yawning metal tube and screams, "_Shut up!_"

The murmurs that had been permeating the air when she'd come in are gone when the sharp echo dies down. The Watchtower plunges into silence, but it only feels like it's egging her on. She stands there, every bone in her body quaking.

"Artemis?" That's Dick's voice behind her. It seems muffled and far away. Still, she stiffens on instinct, because if there's one thing she's learned recently, it's that Dick's presence usually indicates either very good news or very bad.

She doesn't turn around right away. Her head is still pounding.

"We've been wondering where you were—" Dick again.

She pivots around on her heel to face the open part of the Watchtower, away from the tubes. Standing under the screens are, in a line, Dick, Kaldur, M'gann, Conner, and Adam Strange. None of them are smiling.

Only then does she register their demeanors – M'gann, wringing her hands in a way that Artemis hasn't seen since she was a teenager; Conner, standing beside her with his hand braced on her shoulder; Kaldur, next to Conner, his face hewn with severity, and Dick, among them all, slumped with unfathomable exhaustion.

She storms toward them, tearing her mask off of her face.

"He knew!" she shouts, frenzied, glaring wild-eyed at each of them in turn when she comes to a sharp halt in front of them. "Luthor knew. Luthor knew about the last MFD; he set Wally up!"

They're all either staring at her or at the floor, and Adam Strange's eyes are unfocused somewhere on the opposite wall. Artemis's tirade dies down swiftly and she drops her arms to her sides.

"What?" she demands.

It comes out cold and flat and it makes Dick's eyes go wide. M'gann flinches. Conner's brow tightens. Kaldur looks away.

"What is it?" she barks, louder. Her eyes dart to Strange immediately. Her jaw tightens. "What's going on?"

Only then does she notice that Dick isn't wearing his sunglasses or his mask or anything else to conceal his razor-blue, red-edged eyes; they stare at her, unabashedly open.

"It's…" He swallows thickly and averts her simmering gaze. "I think… the doc might be best at explaining it."

"So explain," Artemis hears herself say immediately, turning to Strange.

Strange just stares at her. He looks pained by Dick's suggestion, as if it's the last conceivable thing on the planet that he would ever want to do.

"Artemis," he says. Artemis clears her throat and he adds, "Sorry – Tigress. There's… there's a problem. With the plan, I mean."

"What kind of a problem?" she asks, her voice hushed with coldness.

Strange gulps.

"I mean, it's…" He scratches lightly at his cheek, ducking his blue eyes under a lowering brow. "I've been… studying the accident, and what I've found is that the extent of the damage potentially – _probably_ – done to Kid Flash's body before he ceased seems… extreme."

"So?" She can feel everyone else's eyes lingering intermittently on her with caution, and it only goads her further.

"So…" Strange grimaces, breathes in deeply, and finishes with hurriedness. "Based on my calculations, there's… there's a 50% chance that, if we do manage to get him back, the strain of the journey and of what happened before it could kill him."

Sometimes Artemis has what she can only describe as out-of-body experiences, even though that kind of a phrase doesn't feel like it carries the severity of what happens to her. Something inside of her shuts down and steps back and inspects the stagnant ruins it left behind, and it doesn't come back no matter how much she wills it to. It had happened when Jade left, it had happened in the Arctic, and it's happening now.

Her voice sounds far away to her own ears.

"It could what?"

Strange licks his dry lips and his eyes shoot down to the bundle of files in his hand. Artemis doubts they're relevant to anything; they're probably just something for him to look at.

"The Magnetic Field Disruptors – I mean, I know next to nothing about them; they're alien tech, but… I was examining some of the ones your Team disabled, and—"

"Strange," Artemis finally says, and she rushes back into herself in a crashing wave. "Where's Wally?"

The words seem meaningless in the artificial air of the Watchtower. They need snow, and ice, and lightning, and emptiness.

She feels cool fingers at her elbow, no doubt M'gann's, but she jerks away, steps further aside, so that no one can touch her.

"Just tell it to me straight, Strange," she orders.

Strange looks, suddenly, much older than the files she'd read would seem to indicate. He slumps slightly, one hand dropping into his pocket.

"Well, I guess I should probably start by explaining what happened to him. In a nutshell, Kid Flash was…" he begins, and then shakes his head. "How do I explain this – the chrysalis energy was naturally drawn to speed trails; those were what it was being funneled away into. Since the Flash and Impulse were both going at exceptionally high speeds, the energy was being pulled into their speed trails, instead of directly into their… actual bodies. This is because the speed trails were the slowest-moving object in the vicinity. Their combined _kinetic energy_ – uh, the Flash's and Impulse's, I mean – in the meantime, was what was actually reversing the flow of the cyclone. The energy was just… resistance, in a sense. Once Kid Flash showed up, the kinetic energy he provided was enough to shut down the MFD, but because he was traveling at a slower velocity than the other two, the chrysalis energy was then drawn to _him_, instead of the speed trails."

The memory of Wally's screams shoots through Artemis's brain like a lightning bolt. M'gann must have sensed it, because she winces slightly.

"Kid Flash's body was unaccustomed to the physical strain of traveling at the high speed to which he was, uh… pushing himself." Strange gesticulates meaninglessly. "So there was that. Combined with the energy from the chrysalis, that strain was starting to… overload him. In a sense. But as I said earlier, since his speed was significantly less than that of the Flash and Impulse, and since the energy was drawn to him instead of to the speed trails, it… it treated his _body_ as a speed trail. He basically became a lightning rod. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Artemis replies immediately as a prod for him to continue.

Strange gets the message.

"So much of the chrysalis's energy was absorbed into his body that he started to become _charged_ with it. And since the energy was drawn to speed trails, as he became more and more infused with it, his own speed trail turned against him and started sucking him out of existence. That's why it looked like he was being… pulled back, as the Flash described to me."

Artemis blinks. She hadn't even been aware that Barry was involved, but it's not exactly the time to nitpick. She turns her head sharply to Dick, who mouths, "Later."

"The Scarab referred to this anomaly as 'ceasing' for two reasons," Strange continues, and then he puts up one finger. "First, because Wally wasn't dying, per se; he was just being siphoned off of our plane. Second—" He puts up another finger. "The Scarab didn't know how to describe this process, and 'ceasing' was the closest thing it could find."

"That's the biggest nutshell I've ever heard," Artemis mutters.

"Another plane?" Conner asks, looking thunderstruck.

Strange seems to note his confusion, because he scratches his scalp and looks at the floor and starts muttering quietly to himself in thought.

"Uh… think of it this way." He puts his hands up and frames them illustratively around nothing. "You ever hear of… string theory?"

_We're in a pocket dimension. _

"Yes, exactly." Strange is pointing at her with excitement. She gives a start. She must have said it out loud. "And the thing about speed trails is that they can linger for indefinite amounts of time after they've been left, but they don't interact in any way with the physical plane. They're _amazing_. Impossible to understand, but amazing. Their untapped capabilities are—"

"Let me get this straight," Dick interjects (and not a moment too soon, Artemis thinks dryly). She looks over at him. He's scrubbing a hand over his face, which is pale from lack of sleep. The bags under his eyes are thick and dark. "What happened was that… Wally got yanked into some kind of pocket dimension—"

"Or something like it," Strange adds, but nods.

"—Because he absorbed enough MFD energy that he was drawn into his own speed trail." Dick's voice cracks, seeming to plunge years younger. "S-So he… he's definitely alive."

Strange inclines his head. "Yes. I know it's taken a while for me to say for sure, but… yes. He's alive."

"But…" That's M'gann's voice, sounding grief-stricken already. "That doesn't really… matter anymore. Because we can't bring him back without hurting him. Right?"

"I didn't say that," Strange insists with a raised finger. "It's entirely possible for me to get him back; I've concluded as much. It's just that there's… a _possibility_ that taking him out of the sort of – the limbo, I guess, where he is now… could, uh, not end ideally."

Artemis's mind sours. She could flip a coin right now and Wally's chances of survival would be the same as her chances for seeing it land on tails.

"No kidding, Strange," Conner barks. "'Not end ideally?' Great choice of words."

M'gann's hand darts to his elbow. He looks over at her and she stares back at him imploringly, her eyebrows twitching slightly together, and Artemis can only imagine the shared thoughts bouncing effortlessly through their heads. She doubts M'gann even had to set a link up – she's heard on more than one occasion from Conner that traces of it still linger between his temples.

"Wait, I don't get it," Artemis says without thinking. "How did… how does that explain me hearing him in the zeta tubes?"

Her heart drops before she even finishes the sentence, but it's too late. Everyone's heads turn in her direction. Suddenly there are five sets of galvanized eyes on her, pinning her to an invisible wall.

"'Mis…" Dick finally dares to say, shaking his head barely. "You never said anything about—"

"Wait, Tigress," Strange cuts in pointedly, looking at her with unusual seriousness in his eyes. "Explain."

"It's nothing," Artemis says immediately, just on instinct.

_It's not nothing!_ M'gann's voice is sharp in her left temple. She glances over to see that M'gann is frowning intensely at her._Artemis, it's not nothing. It could help. Please tell us._

"Is… that why you were yelling at the zeta tube a second ago?" Conner inquires with a perplexed blink.

_M'gann, it's crazy_, Artemis thinks back without taking her eyes off the floor. _It's going to make me sound insane; why do you think I haven't told anyone?_

_I don't tell you this very often, but you're being stupid_. M'gann's expression of severity deepens. _How long is it going to take you to figure out that we're on your side? We've never judged you before, and we won't do it now! Didn't you even hear what Kaldur told you? We're here for you and we always have been; so just knock it off and tell us the truth!_

Artemis is stunned into silence, both audible and mental, at the outburst. Conner looks between the two of them like he knows something, but he still seems to be stuck on disbelief at Artemis's slip-up.

"Artemis," Kaldur finally inserts, and Artemis's eyes swivel to him. He steps forward, placing a broad hand on her shoulder. The webbing stretches across her costume, and if she looks at the right angle, she can see veins. "This is no longer the time for keeping secrets. If there is anything you know that we do not, you must tell us."

"Screw 'must,'" Artemis retorts, edging out of his grip. He opens his mouth, but she silences him by breathing in deeply and swiftly and speaking again. "A few months ago, I…"

She huffs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"This is so ridiculous," she mutters under her breath, and then, at a normal volume, "I was in transit in the zeta tube, and, uh… Wally was… there. I heard him say my name. And then it happened again just now; he, uh… said something." She waves a hand at nothing. "Look, don't take it into consideration. It's nothing. I don't even know if I really heard anything; I might've just been… you know. Uh, insane."

"Do not be so self-deprecating," Kaldur tells her gently.

"So that's why you jumped right in to trying to figure out how to bring him back," Conner murmurs in a low voice. "And that's why you took a leave of absence, because you didn't want to have to follow our rules. Because you thought we'd say you were crazy."

His eyes shoot up and meet hers and his mouth thins.

"You're really dumb, you know that?" he declares.

Artemis stiffens.

"Excuse _you_, Con," she retorts. _Nice one_.

"He talked to you?" Dick asks, and suddenly he's in front of her, in her face, gripping her arms. "What did he say? What did he—"

Only then does Artemis remember the echoing, pulsing shambles of words that she'd heard come out of Fate's mouth in Giza. Guilt immediately pricks at her belly at having forgotten, but, at the time, she'd wanted to keep every syllable to herself, as if that would make them survive longer.

"He…" Her breath hitches, but she makes no effort to get out of his grasp. "When Fate channeled him, he wanted me to tell you… uh, something. He didn't finish before Fate lost contact with him."

She turns her head to frown uncertainly at Strange. "He said he was lost."

She can't bring herself to mention that he'd also said he was scared. Wally doesn't do scared.

Dick's fingers slacken. His eyes twitch between hers, as if looking for something he's astonished he can't find.

"I guess it doesn't really matter now, does it?" Artemis says, suddenly, in a voice that is not her own. "If the doc says we're not gonna bring him back, then we're done here."

"It's not my choice," Strange corrects her deliberately. He tucks the files under his arm and looks her firmly in the eye. "It's your call. All of you."

"Oh, no," Artemis laughs. "If anyone's going to be making a call here, it's his parents."

"Do you truly believe it fair to risk igniting false hope for them?" Kaldur asks her, not unkindly.

"We don't want to make this their choice," Dick agrees. "It's not… it's cruel."

"Do you even hear yourself?" M'gann interjects, whirling so fast on the two of them that her cape flutters. "You want to withhold this kind of critical information from his own _parents_? How can you—?"

"I'll tell them," Artemis volunteers abruptly.

Kaldur and Dick both look to her, wide-eyed.

She nods with brusqueness.

"Keeping this a secret from them would be the worst possible thing we could do," she says. "I get where you're coming from, Dick, but…"

She bites her tongue. _You wouldn't understand because your parents are gone._

"We've got to stop leaving people in the dark," she finally whispers.

Conner gives Artemis a wan, but encouraging, smile. Kaldur nods slowly in agreement and M'gann follows suit.

"'Scuse the implication, but," Conner adds, "maybe it's time we…"

"Turned on a light," M'gann finishes for him, her lips quirking.

"Yeah," Artemis breathes out, feeling heavy. "I'll tell them."

"Now wait a minute; wait a minute," Strange halts her, putting his hand out as if to quell the conversation. Artemis turns to face him tentatively.

"He made no complaints about his, uh…" Strange snaps his fingers like it'll jump-start his brain. "About his physical state?"

Artemis shakes her head, feeling increasingly self-conscious with every piece of information divulged. Despite this, she can sense M'gann's mind pressing encouragingly to hers, and she feels a little less off-kilter.

"No," she answers, closing her eyes to reawaken the memory. It makes something catch in her throat, but she gulps it down. "He sounded… fine, I guess. Just far away."

Strange's hand goes to his chin and curls around it. His eyebrows scrunch together in an abstruse frown and he folds his lips in.

"So…" Dick asks in a ragged voice that makes guilt descend upon Artemis in a crashing collapse. "_Why_ did you wait until just now to mention this, again?"

Artemis bristles. Her head jerks back to him, and she glares freely.

"Like you really would've believed me," she barks. "Three weeks after Wally—three weeks after _that_, and I'm already blasting around and raving about hearing him say my name in the _zeta_ tubes? Yeah, that would've gone over great."

She scowls at the others. Only Conner is spared.

"You guys would've just looked at me and felt sorry for me. Don't lie." Her voice rises. "'Oh, poor Artemis; she's so upset that she's gone off the deep end! Look at that poor baby being in denial.' I didn't need that."

"Believe what you wish to, Artemis," Kaldur tells her with warmth and patience. "But know that we have heard you now, and we believe you now. That is all that matters."

Artemis swallows.

"All right," Strange suddenly says, causing all of them to start. He runs a hand through his limp hair and breathes out slowly, emptily. "I'll… look into this further with that in mind and keep all of you posted. But for now…"

He sighs, the entire breath eked out of him.

"For now…" he repeats. "There's too much risk. It doesn't look good."

The words slam into Artemis in a single swing and, to be honest, she's surprised the impact doesn't knock her to the ground. M'gann reaches toward her, but before she can touch her, Artemis pivots around on one heel and strides swiftly back to the zeta tubes.

She hears Dick call her name, sounding wounded, but she doesn't respond.

* * *

It's almost dawn when she steps out of the Gotham City zeta booth. The sky is a tepid combination of lavender and yellow from the smog. There's a bum snoring against the brick wall; she has to step over him. She emerges onto the street to see that it's deserted. Instead of traveling the usual way, by rooftop (as she'd taught herself many years ago, despite her father's vociferously averse reaction that she'd been too young to understand the significance of), she walks down the sidewalks with her mask and costume on for all the sleeping world to ignore. Her arms are straight at her sides, swinging stiffly in time with her legs.

The door slams closed behind her when she gets up to the apartment, and her legs feel pathetically strained from the hike up the stairs. She wishes the force would leave cracks in the wall, but it doesn't.

She sidesteps two cardboard boxes in the entryway (packed with Wally's old clothes, his dog-eared _Harry Potter_ books, his action figures of Superman and Spock) and doesn't look down at Brucely as he paws up beside her.

She throws her mask onto the bed and moves to sit down at the foot of it, but she misses. Instead she slumps to the floor, her knees raised and askew, propping her elbows on her raised thighs and gripping her hair until it hurts.

She doubles over. Her eyes are welling over with something hot and wet, and she's letting out silent wheezes and hiccups in lieu of sobs. Her tears are messy and angry and her face is contorted to the point of giving her a headache, but she can't stop.

For the first time since Wally had gone, it feels like things are happening too fast. First he'd been dead, and then he hadn't, and then he'd just been _gone_, and then she'd been alone, and then she hadn't, but not before she'd been Tigress, and not before she'd soaked her shaking hands with the blood of strangers; and then she'd heard nothing and then something and she'd hoped and she'd coped and she'd raged and now he may as well be dead again, scrambling senselessly out of her reach, and everything is bursting rapidly into shattered fragments around and inside of her. And it's only been nine months.

She whimpers. Brucely pads over and rests his chin tentatively on one of her knees, slobbering with solidarity. She absentmindedly strokes his ear and, without even noticing what she's doing, pulls her cell phone out of one of her pockets.

She calls Roy.

"H'lo?" His voice is groggy and irritable.

At first, she doesn't say anything. Her mind has to catch up with the fact that there's a phone with someone on the other end at her ear.

"Whoever you are, it is five in the morning and I'm dangerously close to tracking this call so I can find you and kill you, so—"

"How did you deal with it?" she blurts out furiously. "How did you deal with five _years_ of dead ends and – and bad news and… not _finding_ him?"

There's a beat of silence.

"Jesus, Artemis; is that you?" he groans.

In the background, Artemis hears a purr of, "Hi, sis," to which Roy responds with a command to shut up before returning his attention to the present conversation.

"What're you—"

"Just answer the question," she half-demands and half-implores. "Roy, _please_; I feel like I'm—"

The vulnerability leaves a sour taste on her teeth that forces her into breaking off. She runs a hand over her forehead and stops it at her scalp.

"You know?" she finishes with inexplicable aggression.

Roy's sigh makes a crackling noise in the speaker. As Artemis waits for his response, she glances with raw-feeling eyes to the window – some feeble drizzle is starting to dart across the pane, and the sun is rising, turning the sky white and gray.

"I taught myself not to care," he finally tells her, but not without caution. "It didn't really matter what happened or what went wrong, as long as _I_ knew he was out there and _I_ still wanted to find him. It wasn't exactly _great_ for my sanity, and if it hadn't been for Ch—for _Jade_, I probably wouldn't have ever—"

"I feel like I need to kill something," she snarls, her hands shaking. Brucely, as if sensing this, immediately stiffens and backs out of the room with haste.

"What's going on?" he asks in a grumble. She can practically envision him rubbing his eyes as Jade encircles his waist with her arms and nuzzles into his chest like a cat. "I can't give you advice unless I know what's—"

"Does it matter?" Artemis yells over him, at such a high voice that it immediately betrays the leftover tears in her throat. "Everything's going south and I can't do anything about it even after all the—"

"Quit interrupting me," he barks. Artemis's cheeks flare.

"You just interrupted _me_," she snaps.

"Fair game."

She scowls, even though she knows he can't see it.

"Just go out and kick a few bank robbers' teeth in." He yawns. "Or something. Just don't kill anyone and don't die, but yeah, break a few useless bones and then eat some pancakes."

"But I—"

"Good _night_, Artemis. Or – _ugh_, I guess it's good morning. _Thanks_."

"Toodles," Jade's voice drifts in, and before Artemis can respond, there's a click.

She decides not to tell Mary or Rudolph about anything Strange has discovered, especially now that things look more hopeless than they had when Wally had just been "ceased" – they deserve the ragged lack of closure far, far less than she does.

She stays on the floor until the dawn has crept to the peeling paint on the ceiling. When she gets to her feet again, both of her knees pop.

She showers for so long that the hot water runs out. She doesn't turn it off. Her still-growing hair snakes down the back of her neck in cold rivulets that do nothing to kick her awake.

* * *

As the days go by, her brain starts to come up with the most irrational conclusion she's ever heard of, but it's inexorable and unflagging: _If she can just get her hands on Lex Luthor and break his neck, everything will be fine again_.

She knows how stupid it is, and how bad of a sign it is that she's starting to become legitimately convinced that all of her problems can be solved with murder. But she supposes Tigress's blackened, calculating consciousness is a prime breeding ground for these kinds of ideas: the dark ones, and the mad ones, the ones that howl and claw and drive her forward from the pit of her bitter stomach.

She breaks Count Vertigo's nose when she, Batgirl, Robin, and an errant Dick confront him during an attempted Belle Reve breakout. Her knuckles crawl with life and satisfaction at the sensation of something snapping against them, but Dick has to pull her off and half-yell at her about protocol and keeping her head. It doesn't matter anyway; she doesn't pay attention. She counts her rapid breaths and tampers down an exhilarated smile. It's good to be back out in the field in a capacity that permits at least some level of violence.

She wishes she could laugh at the idiot who thought it was a bright idea to deploy her on another mission (with Bart) to personally foil Captain Cold's attempt to freeze over the entirety of Central City, especially when being surrounded by so much ice causes her to fly into rage-fueled battle mode. Bart, who spends most of the time quipping out terrible puns, manages to keep her in check, but Cold still winds up with a lot of unnecessary bruises that garner a pointed side-eye from Kaldur during the debriefing.

"You were awesome!" Bart commends her with two thumbs up after the squads disperse post-debrief. "Totally scary and way violent, but awesome! Let's team up again more often. By the way can I stay over tonight I've got an essay I want you to look at and I'm literally dying to eat some of your curry so you don't have any choice last one there's feelin' the mode!"

He pecks her cheek the same way he always does and zips away with a guffaw that echoes in every yawning crevice of the Watchtower.

She follows slowly.

She should have known that the lull in activity would be a precursor to something enormous. It's April 14th when Kaldur calls the entire Team to the Watchtower, stating that he "requires all hands on deck" and that their mission assignment will require all of them, to be assembled in one collective squad.

It's just like the old days, Artemis thinks. Except there are about fifteen of them now, instead of a nice, compact six. She's not about to get nostalgic here, but all she's saying is that it's going to be insane.

Even Dick shows up for the briefing, in costume. Artemis's eyes go up behind her mask, but he can't see them – he just winks cheekily at her, tilting his chin. Barbara seems thrilled.

"Team," Kaldur tells them in his "mission voice," his arms folded over his chest. "After many months of investigation, we have discovered the location of Lex Luthor's new Reach drink manufacturing plant. It is now being produced under the label 'Luthorade.'"

Bart guffaws noisily and Jaime elbows him, hard, in the stomach.

"I do not understand it, either," Kaldur says as an aside, but then he's back to business. "A single floor of LexCorp that was once merely offices has recently been converted into a manufacturing level and has been operating for approximately two months without the knowledge of the Team or the Justice League. We must shut this entire level down immediately. I understand that this is a diversion from our usual covert policy—"

"That normally ends in something exploding," Tim adds dryly.

Kaldur narrows his eyes.

"—but we cannot afford to let Luthor produce this drink any further," he finishes. "Waiting to investigate would only give production the chance to increase. This is no longer a chance we can take. Our mission tonight is to infiltrate LexCorp, and sabotage the manufacturing floor as best we can."

He starts to point to bunches of them.

"Wonder Girl; El Dorado; Guardian; you are all on perimeter. Bumblebee; Batgirl; you two will be in charge of the initial infiltration and will scope the floor for defense levels before joining us in combat. Beast Boy; Robin; you are in charge of procuring a sample of the drink for the League to analyze. Samurai; Static – you two will need to take care of the security on the lobby floor to clear our way."

Artemis blinks and looks over her shoulder at the Runaways. They're all still dressed in civvies, but apparently they have alter egos now. She doesn't even remember the names being declared.

Asami catches her eyes and gives her two thumbs up. Eduardo and Tye both simply glance at her and proceed to shift uncomfortably at the apparent scrutiny.

She redirects her attention to Kaldur again.

"The rest of you – Blue Beetle, Apache, Kid Flash, Tigress, Nightwing, Superboy, and Lagoon Boy – will join me in the direct siege and sabotage mission. Remember – our priority is to destroy the machines. Incapacitating the guards should be swift and harmless and should not interfere with our main objective."

Artemis might be losing it, but she swears his eyes linger on her with pointedness during that last part. She rolls her shoulders back and cracks her neck.

"Ready when you are, boss," she drawls. Everyone nods in agreement except for M'gann, Dick, and Conner, but she pays them no mind, staring Kaldur in the eye without blinking.

"Then let us deploy," Kaldur declares after a moment that only she can sense is too long, immediately heading for the docking bay. "Those of you who can take the Super Cycle, do so. The rest of you, rendez-vous at LexCorp from the Metropolis zeta tube."

"Oh, man," Virgil snickers, rubbing his hands together. "This is gonna be _good_."

Asami exclaims, "_Hai_!" and raises her fist. He bumps against it with a wicked smile that she shares.

Artemis forces her heart rate to stay even. Maybe Lex Luthor's neck isn't so far from her hands after all.

* * *

Everything goes smoothly. Well, smoothly by their standards. Meaning there are only a few small explosions here and there, but maybe they're acceptable this time because that's kind of the point.

To Artemis's momentarily felt shock, the floor that they're supposed to be destroying is the same yawning mechanical labyrinth that she and Jade had stepped into only four months ago. She doesn't have very long to think about what an idiot she is for not making the connection before the guards are upon them.

The numbers are exact to Barbara and Karen's estimates, so they're all well-prepared for the fight. Artemis sprints into it ahead of the rest, her arms diagonally pointed behind her for better speed, one holding a crossbow and the other an ordinary arrow. She has plans to stick it somewhere useful. Like in a mook's open throat.

It's difficult to say who does the most damage. Tye is a definite contender, utilizing his golden giant of a form to pick up tanks where they stand and smash them to the ground. Everyone's feet slosh around through rivers of the drink that smells like cherries. It's sticky on their fingers and faces.

Artemis is focused less on the equipment-destroying itself and more on defending the members of the Team who are occupied with just that. She swings and kicks and punches and bones crunch and shouts are heard, and on her face, there's a smile, serene and content, growing stronger with every yelp of pain she elicits from her opponents.

She's a machine. It's been a long time since she's moved with such murderous grace, and she can almost smell the metal and salt and rust of Manta's submarine. Every movement she makes is fluid and calculated. The arrow digs into flesh somewhere, and a man falls; she doesn't even think on it. Another guard aims his gun at Dick's back, but Artemis fires a shot from her crossbow before he can even steady himself. It buries itself in his chest and he topples.

Then, just as she whirls away to face whoever is stupid enough to try his luck with her next, she freezes completely. Her fist remains raised and her smile snaps away.

Luthor is standing on a metal balcony over it all, overlooking the fray. His hands are grasping the railing loosely, Mercy is standing attentively beside him.

"Bravo, bravo!" he's calling down. "How marvelous. And here I was thinking tonight would be dull."

If Artemis had hackles, they would be rising.

"Son, you're looking well!" Luthor shouts to Conner through a cupped hand. "We _must_ catch up sometime soon."

"_Luthor_!" Artemis screams at the absolute peak of her lungpower, to the point that the sound rattles audibly against the wide walls.

Lex blinks with a befuddled smile at nothing for a moment before carefully looking around, scanning the area. When his eyes finally land on her, her shoulders are heaving, and her ribs are thundering into one another with a growing, unstoppable wrathfulness.

"My, my," Luthor says, his impeccable smile never faltering. "If it isn't the late Kid Flash's old partner. You look radiant, my dear – impressive, considering your rather _unfortunate_ circumstances."

She roars, sounding as wild and animalistic as her costume's namesake, a rageful and blood-boiled sound starting in her chest and charging out of her snarled mouth. Its echo against the metal makes the air in the entire factory go cold. The battle seems to still around her.

Without missing a beat, she raises her crossbow in a single deadly surge of her arm, aims straight for Luthor's heart, and fires.

Dick tells her later that she would have killed him if it hadn't been for Bart. As her finger hugs the trigger, something bats into her arm, knocking her aim off-kilter just as the crossbow releases. The arrow buries itself harmlessly into Luthor's shoulder, and as he stumbles back and Mercy fires at her, it's Bart who pushes her out of the way – and is hit instead.

Artemis whirls, splayed on the ground and bruised, just in time to see the blast slam into the boy clothed in yellow and red. He cries out, a young and agonized sound, as it strikes him from the side, sending him smashing against a stone wall and slumping.

As she watches – just before something collides with the back of her head and cuts her vision to black – she screams out the wrong name.

* * *

She wakes up in the bioship to the sight of Conner's face.

"You're awake," he tells her, like she doesn't know.

"Bart," she croaks immediately, though her vision is still blotted. "Where's Bart; is he…"

Conner's face darkens (well, as much as an already tetchy-looking face can do so) and he leans slightly back, his eyebrows furrowing.

"It doesn't look good," he replies simply. His expression is stony and tense. "They had to take him to a regular hospital first. Superman knew a trusted one in the area, so – he's there."

Artemis closes her eyes, grimacing with either pain or guilt; she isn't really sure.

"You…" Conner says after a moment, and when Artemis opens her eyes to look at him again, she can see that he's staring at his hands, running his thumbs over his knuckles. "You called him Wally."

Artemis shifts down on the cot, rolling her head so that it's facing the wall instead of Conner. She lays her hand across her stomach, and her fingers feel cold.

"Honest mistake," she mutters.

"He's not coming back, Artemis," Conner says.

Artemis goes rigid at the words. It's the first time she's heard them, the first time anyone has dared to even suggest such a thing to her. They've been the forbidden thought on everyone's tongues, the one taboo that everyone has tactfully avoided, out of pity or fear or grief or kindness.

Of course Conner's the one to say them.

"You don't know that," she whispers, hoping he doesn't hear her. It's a stupid thing to hope for; the guy's got super-hearing.

"I guess not," he admits in a tight voice. "But he should be dead until proven alive. Not the other way around."

"I don't need a lecture from you, Con," she growls, trying to push herself up on slightly shaking arms.

He has a hand on her elbow in an instant, holding her in place without even looking up. She shoots him a venomous glare that he doesn't acknowledge.

"Don't do this," he mumbles. Artemis loosens just slightly. Even though his body will never age, his voice has begun to sound much older – so much more like Superman's.

"Do what?" She keeps her voice neutral.

"This." His eyes dart up to meet hers and her stomach feels pinched. "Don't do this to yourself. Or to Bart. Or to us." His face cracks slightly with emotion. "Artemis, it's not his fault that Wally—"

Artemis uses his brief moment of vulnerability to yank her arm out of his hand and surge away from him, but he has her other wrist before she can stand completely, his grip much more vice-like. She winces, turning to him.

"You're hurting me," she says coldly. She knows he can tell it's a threat.

He glares at her, the first sign of his adolescent fury that's been directed at her in years, and doesn't slacken his grasp.

"Guess I was hoping it'd wake you up," he tells her, with just as much iciness.

It takes her a moment to respond.

"Let go of me, Conner, or I'll make you," she finally snarls.

Her eyes are narrow and dangerous and Conner's face contorts with spite, but he releases her swiftly as though her skin is burning him. Part of her wishes that it could.

"Kaldur wants to talk to you as soon as we land," he barks, standing. "Until then, you're supposed to stay in here. And I don't know if it matters to you, but Dick's rejoining the Team. Bye."

He strides past her with angry swiftness, and the partition between the cots and the rest of the ship slides closed behind him. She wishes she had a pillow that she could throw at it, her only mildly effectual hope of retaliating against a stone-cold clone with immeasurable strength and nerves.

She settles for glowering at it, her bones pulsing with heat and terror and her stomach churning with uncertainty, until she feels the ship start to slow and eventually coast to the ground.

* * *

The silence is absolute when she steps into the mission room from the docking bay. She'd been the last to disembark, and it shows – the Team is gathered in their usual formation for debriefing, but all of their eyes are on her.

Artemis inhales sharply through her nose and throws her shoulders back, striding with as much pride and self-assurance as she can muster past them, until she's facing Kaldur.

She doesn't take her eyes off of him. She's never seen him look so tired, like he would rather sink to his knees and sleep than look the rest of the world in the eye.

He lifts his hand to one of the holographic keypads and presses a button. In an instant, a wide screen pops up overhead, and on it stands Lex Luthor, at a podium lined with a picket fence of microphones, with his arm in a sling.

"Frankly," he's saying serenely (but with a deadliness that floors them all), "I don't see why this apparent team of Justice League trainees thinks that it can go blustering around wherever it pleases and attack anyone, average citizen or noted politician, that it sees fit. These youngsters not only sabotaged my headquarters and cost me millions of dollars in damages – under the _entirely_ false pretense that I was creating a replica of the _Reach_ drink, of all things – but they had the gall and the madness to assault me with violence. Had Mercy not been at my side, I would have died. Is this what the Justice League has become? A group that condones the acceptance of false information as well as – dare I say it – _political assassinations_? This is a dark day, my friends."

The clip freezes and zooms out to show that it's being played on a screen by none other than G. Gordon Godfrey. The camera pans over to show him shaking his head with histrionic disappointment.

"That's _right_, folks," he declares in his usual hammy tone, straightening up with flaring nostrils. "Even _after_ the utter de_bac_le that was the Reach invasion of this past summer, the _Justice_ League con_tin_ues to prove itself an utter _circus_ of debauchery and_to_tal idiocy _bent_ on bringing _pan_demonium to a planet _still_ recovering from this ca_tas_trophe – and above it _all_, and this is what's keeping old G. Gordon up at night, they're sending a deluded gaggle of _chil_dren out to do their _dir_ty work! And what do these children do? Why, run _ram_pant, of course! I _pity_ whatever fools in the audience _still_ think—"

Kaldur pauses it there. Artemis doesn't need to see the rest.

"Artemis." His voice is hoarse and heavy. "You have tarnished our reputation in a way that will take a great deal of time to repair. You have turned the missions of this Team into an avenue for a personal vendetta, and now we are all forced to pay the price. I… I have made a decision. Regarding your actions today, as well as recently."

Artemis shifts, loosening one shoulder and keeping the other up. Her nonchalance is not forced, and she doesn't feel guilty about it.

"Fine," she replies. "Enlighten me."

It takes him a moment. She can feel everyone's eyes prickling into her spine, but she doesn't give any of them the satisfaction of acknowledgement. No trace of nervousness or dread trickles through her; only apathy, gray and certain, rests in the pit of her stomach like a stone.

"Artemis, I am sorry," Kaldur finally says in a deep and stricken voice. His is face pinched with regret, but at least he has the balls to look her in the eye. "But for the good of the Team… for the safety of us all, and for yourself… you are suspended."

"It's temporary," Mal murmurs, as though it's supposed to help.

"You will be given guest access to the zeta tubes, so that you may travel from city to city, but will only be granted entry to the Watchtower if authorized and accompanied by a Team or League member." Kaldur's voice is detached and flat, all business. "Your access to Team and League files will be revoked, and—"

"I got it," Artemis cuts in, quiet and cold.

Kaldur goes silent and she swings her eyes up, riveting a hateful stare right onto him.

"Artemis," he mutters. "I—"

"Don't," she whispers, bitter with spite. "It's Tigress."

Kaldur's expression is pained when she turns away. The Team watches her, wordless, and parts, like a gantlet. She doesn't look any of them in the eye, but as she passes Dick, she sees fit to spit out a few words.

"Fair enough trade," she snarls with venom, shouldering roughly past him as she storms the rest of the way to the zeta tube.

He makes a noise as though her touch had wounded him, but she doesn't give any of them the satisfaction of looking back.

Bart's the only one she has any interest in caring about anymore, anyway.

She punches in her access code and the coordinates of Star City and the zeta tube whirs to life.

"_Recognized. Artemis. A16._"

The sound of the number – _16_ – puts a chill in her bones and grinds her teeth together. As she steps into the light of the tube, she flings her middle finger into the air over her shoulder.


	10. Chapter 10

**Damn; a lot more was supposed to happen in here but then it ran away from me and now it's at 8,400 words. Why does this keep happening to me. **

**IN OTHER NEWS, THIS IS IT, GUYS. WE'RE IN THE HOME STRETCH.**

* * *

"Jade's not here," Roy grunts, and then his eyes dart to the object in her hands. "Please tell me I'm hallucinating and that's _not_ a suitcase."

Artemis sucks in a breath that she hopes will prop up whatever feeble remnants she has left of her pride. The late spring storm outside has left her hair more than a little soaked, so she has no doubt she resembles a particularly angry waterlogged cat, with her single beat-up suitcase clenched in one hand and a rain-dampened paper bag of pastries from the bakery down the street in the other.

"Yeah, and _you_ weren't here yesterday when I came over," she retorts. "Can I just tell you what's going on inside, or do you need a password?"

Roy snorts and rolls his eyes, but steps aside, holding the door open for her. She kicks him in the ankle on the way in for good measure.

There's something funny about being at Roy and Jade's apartment. She feels significantly less inclined to shut herself off in favor of the alternate personality she'd built from the tarred ground up while faking her own death and infiltrating an organization of supervillains. The sensation is ironic, considering the apartment's occupants, but she doesn't really care; Lian balances it out.

She hears the door close behind her and surveys the living room. The couch has been moved off of the far left wall and into the middle of it, only a couple of feet away from the TV. It's freed up a lot more space beside the divider isolating the kitchen area.

"So?" Roy prompts her from behind.

She sets her suitcase down and faces him, but not before tossing the bag onto the nearby kitchen table.

"Jade already told me it was fine to stay here for however long I wanted, so shut up. Basically Kaldur kicked me off the Team and I wanted some people to complain about it to," she explains brusquely. "Plus… this'll give me something to do. I thought you and I could – do some patrolling."

Roy raises an eyebrow, looking unmoved.

"First of all," he says without missing a beat, "Kaldur couldn't even kick a rock off of a _cliff_ if he wanted to; he probably just suspended you and you're overreacting. Second, we are _not_ going to listen to you whine for kicks; what do we look like, Dinah? Third, _wh_y are you off the Team; fourth, don't you have a _dog_ you need to be taking care of; and fifth, yeah, sure, we can do that; whatever."

Artemis blinks at him momentarily in the wake of _that_ particular tirade before sighing. It feels like setting down something heavy.

"Zee's taking care of Brucely, and Kaldur, uh…" She cracks her neck, trying to look apathetic. "Have you been – watching the news?"

Roy snorts, loping over to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. He slumps down into it, leaning back and crossing his arms.

"Let's see. Have I been watching something designed by politicians and corrupt fatcats specifically to mislead—"

"Okay, so that's a no." She puts her hands on her hips and scowls down at him. The expression he returns her is equally withering.

She huffs.

"I basically killed a couple guys and made Lex Luthor start a media crusade against the Team because I tried to kill _him_," she says as quickly as possible.

Roy's expression doesn't change.

"Nice job missing, genius."

She bristles. "Who asked you?"

"Uh, _you_ did, when you showed up at my apartment with a suitcase," he retorts. "After calling me at the crack of dawn last month for free therapy. And, y'know, when you – joined the esteemed Arrow clan, or whatever."

Artemis stares at him.

"Did you just imply that we're family," she says flatly.

"Don't get any ideas," he grumbles, standing – but it's not a "no."

He shuffles into the kitchen and starts rummaging around, eventually producing a Tupperware tub of something from the fridge.

"So you're—" Artemis wills her voice not to shake. "You're not gonna start asking me what my problem is, or what's wrong, or what I was thinking or why I'm not—"

"No," Roy cuts her off, pulling two chipped bowls out from the cabinet over the stove. "Doesn't seem like something you want to talk about, and I'm sure you've had to answer all of that crap dozens of times. Why would you come here if you wanted to talk about your feelings? Tch."

He turns to face her, holding up the bowls and the tub.

"Ollie left me a ton of chili, because he's insane," he tells her. "You're having some. No arguments."

Artemis doesn't see any point in (or, truthfully, have any desire to) arguing with him. He heats the chili up in a pot on the stove and the two of them wind up sitting at opposite sides of the kitchen table, wiping their running noses with enough paper napkins to probably cover the floor, snarking out insults at each other until Jade comes home.

Roy is unexpectedly appalled to hear that she's no longer using a bow and insists that she take it up again. He can give her refresher lessons, he offers dryly, and she barks out a laugh and tells him not to flatter himself.

Still, though, she agrees.

* * *

"And where are you off to?" Jade chirps from her position in front of the stove in a sardonic impersonation of early morning cheerfulness.

Artemis zips up her hoodie and finishes tying her hair back into a comically short, but still there, ponytail. She takes the piece of toast out from between her teeth and, on the way to the door, ruffles Lian's hair, eliciting a giggle. Roy glances up from his bowl of Kix.

"Uh, out, Jade," Artemis replies a bit snippily, per the norm whenever she's interacting with her sister.

Jade snorts, using the spatula to nudge the egg she's frying.

"Well, don't stay out too late, and don't bring any cute boys home; I might have to take them for myself," she coos.

Artemis rolls her eyes and tucks her cell phone into her pocket before leaving.

She walks down the sidewalk with her hands in her pockets and actually dares to look at her surroundings this time, instead of at the ground. It's not until she passes the movie theatre that she's forced to swallow something down and avert her eyes.

"_Come onnnnn, Artemis; it'll be fun! It's got dragons! Dragons, Artemis._"

"_A. Why are _you_ promoting a movie about magic to me? And B. Zombies win over dragons; I'm sorry._"

"_You're the worst. Why would I wanna watch a movie where all the characters I start to like get their eyeballs eaten?_"

"_I think you're just a sissy._"

"_Am not! Pleeease, Artemis? Please?_"

"_Ugh, fine. Fine! But you're buying the popcorn_. _Get off your knees, moron; people are staring._"

"_You sure they're not staring at you, babe? Oh, and if I buy the popcorn, will you kiss me?_"

"_We'll see._"

* * *

Metropolis General Hospital is huge, just like everything else in that stupid city. Artemis walks through the revolving door at the entrance lobby feeling incredibly small, craning her neck back to stare at the high glass ceiling. She shakes off the awe and closes her mouth and approaches the round reception desk at the center of it all, passing the plentiful number of people in the waiting room around her.

Conner had called her the night before to tell her where Bart is recovering – and he's fine, of course, the little creep. (No matter how many times Artemis insults him in her head, though, it doesn't take away the thick lump in her throat when she remembers that what he'd done had been for _her_.) Apparently his super healing had saved him, for the most part, but since it's still relatively spotty due to his age, he'll have a scar across his ribs.

It doesn't seem right, Bart being scarred. But Artemis supposes that it happens to the best of them.

The receptionist's glasses are red and her hair is black, pulled uniformly into a bun at the nape of her neck. She's pecking away at the keyboard in front of her, her eyes darting across the computer screen. Artemis clears her throat and the woman glances up at her neutrally.

"Good morning," the receptionist says in a voice as cool as the tiled floor around them.

"I'm here to see… Kid Flash?" Artemis says in a hushed tone. It doesn't feel too strange to say it anymore.

"Name?" the receptionist asks automatically, clicking at something with the mouse and glancing up at her expectantly.

"Tigress," Artemis replies.

The receptionist scrolls with one finger on the tiny plastic wheel, pursing her lips and squinting. After a moment, she shakes her head and looks back at Artemis.

"There's no Tigress on the list of authorized visitors," she tells her.

Artemis's eyebrows pinch sharply together. So Kaldur had the nerve to not only revoke her access to the Watchtower, but to remove her name from privileged lists, to the point where she couldn't even visit the kid who'd been spending every Thursday and Friday night at her dingy apartment for the past two months, who'd bought a string of cheap paper lanterns and hung them up in a blur in the living room to "brighten up the place."

"Oh," she says in a clipped tone. "Sorry, then. My mistake."

She turns around to leave, but after about three steps, something occurs to her, and she halts.

She's back at the desk again and the receptionist looks slightly tetchier than she had earlier.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"It, uh…" Artemis clears her throat and looks down. "It might be… under 'Artemis?'"

The receptionist looks to the screen again, her expression unchanging, and blinks once, scrolls, and nods.

"There's an Artemis here," she says. "Please take a seat; a nurse will be out to escort you momentarily."

The patient rooms are framed by floor-to-ceiling glass windows instead of walls. Artemis is led down a hallway on the third floor that goes on for just five too long by a nurse whose whole posture and manner of speaking radiate efficiency. Her eyes darting over the beds hidden by curtains, the people in wheelchairs, the families encircling them all.

The nurse halts in front of room 316, stepping aside and gesturing for Artemis to go in. Artemis thanks her and steps inside, willing her throat not to constrict.

The lights are off inside, and only one of the two beds is occupied. The machines splay the dim walls in dashes of cold blue and hard red and neon green, and there's a heart monitor pinging, a TV playing the barely audible sounds of a laugh track.

Artemis's shoulders loosen when her eyes fall on Bart. He's propped up on a mountainous arrangement of pillows, but he's asleep. There's an empty bag of Chicken Whizees on his bedside table, and a Rubick's cube next to it. He looks no worse for wear, really – his right arm is in a sling, and his hair's a little messier than usual, and he looks just a little paler, but otherwise, his chest is rising and falling evenly and he looks like he's… perfectly fine.

Artemis sits down in the white plastic chair on the left side of his bed and the nurse leaves her. She stares half-lidded at Bart, whose twitching face and slightly kicking feet are giving her the impression that he's close to waking up.

Within a few minutes, his eyes crawl open. He blinks blearily, frowning, like he has no idea where he is.

"Hey," she whispers. Her hand immediately darts to his wrist, and her fingers lay across it. The contact with the buzzing skin sends goosebumps up her arm and she almost draws away.

He groans hoarsely, wincing at his newfound consciousness.

"I have reached…" he croaks. "New heights… of moded."

"Yeah, well, you _did_ almost die." She sighs through her nose as she slumps up, releasing him to cross her arms on the mattress and rest her chin on them. Wearily, she glares up at him. "I kinda wish you had. Maybe you'd've learned something."

Bart lets out a chuckle weak in authenticity and stares at his hands. Artemis tilts her head sideways, her cheek relaxing against her wrist.

"What were you thinking, Bart?" she asks quietly. The heart monitor chips away at the stale silence.

"Because he—" He swallows when she glances up sharply. "Because… I didn't want everyone to lose_you_, too."

Artemis softens slightly, and her glower dissolves into only a frown. "Bart…"

"Artemis, trust me; I know a lot about time," he cuts her off. She drops into speechlessness – he's looking her in the eye, and his voice is even and serious and far too grown-up for such a small and rampant body, for such bright eyes. "My whole life, I've had to spend every second trying to figure it out. It was my choice to come back here… my choice to fix things. So I know especially what makes time go wrong, and if you'd gotten killed, it…" He trails off, darts his eyes down to his lap. "It would've gone wrong."

Artemis looks at him. In the dimness, the shadows on his face make him look older (to the point that it almost terrifies her, because, for a second, she wonders if everything he does is an act to hide the real part of him, the part that makes her feel like a child who's seen nothing worth being scared of). Just at the tip of his nose, fresh and light from the burgeoning spring, there is a dusting of new freckles.

"But you dying would've been fine?" she finally demands. "Who'd be there to carry on Wally's legacy, then? Who'd be there to drive Jay and Joan crazy? Who'd be there whenever Jaime—"

"Ah, Artemis, c'mon," Bart interrupts in a quiet, but slightly amused, mumble. "There's no future for me; nobody'd miss me. My future's gone. I'm just kinda floating around."

"No, you're not, you little twerp," she retorts. She points at him. "Jay and Joan would be totally miserable if you weren't around. Barry would be lost without you. You think Jaime would be much better off? Or Cassie, or Robin, or Gar? Or _me_? Give me a break. The whole _world_ would slow down if you weren't here. That's just who you are. That's what you mean to us now. You left your future? Fine. Now you've gotta suck it up and make a new one. No takebacks; sorry."

She sits up straight and folds her arms proudly, and Bart sort of marvels at her, scratching his head. Eventually, that stoniness to his face starts to ebb, until he's back to his cheek-pinching grin and springy disposition.

"You're pretty cool, Artemis," he declares, and then reaches for one of the plastic cups beside him on the table. "But that doesn't change what I said. And, uh, not to be rude, but maybe you could consider taking your own advice. About letting the past go and concentrating on the future."

She doesn't really have a response for that. It doesn't matter, because his attention has been rerouted in an instant.

"You want any Jell-O?" He beams, extending the cup to her.

"Uh," Artemis laughs, taking it and surrendering. "No, thank you."

Bart proceeds to explain the extent of his injuries, babbling wildly with excitement as though they're the best thing to ever happen to him. The broken arm is from where he'd hit the wall and has nothing to do with the blast from Mercy. He'd had to have stitches from where the beam had hit him, and, as he excitedly shows her when he pulls his hospital gown up to his neck, there's a large pink scar all up his side from the burn.

Artemis bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from telling him that it looks awesome. Then again, she's much more distracted by the bountiful explosion of _other_ scars, all varying lengths and ages, that seems to be on every part of his torso.

She must have whitened, because he drops his gown immediately and looks at her with concern.

"They're really nothing; I swear," he insists. "None of them are from now except the… the big one. So they don't even count. Oh please please please stop looking like that or I'm gonna call 911. Oh wait. This _is_ 911. How do you call 911 when you're _at_ 911? I'm still getting used to this 'call people and they'll help you' thing. Are you alive?"

He waves his hand in front of her face and she glares at him, which makes him grin.

"There we go!" he chirps. "Good as new!"

When her expression doesn't alleviate, he sighs, his shoulders slumping.

"Look, I _told_ you guys that my future was like… a cornucopia of the mode," he tells her, his eyes drifting to the opposite wall, his face darkening with clearly unwelcome memories. "You think I would've gotten out of it without a few scratches?"

Artemis shakes her head to clear it and breathes out through her nose. She takes Bart's hand in hers again, and he looks down at it, surprised, and then up to her. She's glad his eyes aren't green enough to pinch her stomach.

"I guess I'm glad you got out of it at all," she mutters. "That's what matters."

He brightens a little, nodding.

"Well, hey, who else is gonna take care of you?" he jokes, and then blanches when her face spasms with the slightest twinge of pain. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, I didn't say that; pretend I didn't say that. No no no, Artemis; no; that's not what I—"

He gives up on speaking and instead settles for flinging his arms awkwardly around her from his angle on the bed, until her nose collides with his shoulder.

"Just gonna hug you," he babbles. "Just gonna keep on hugging you. No takebacks."

Artemis slumps in exasperation, because, really, what he'd said hadn't bothered her at all – but maybe that's what hurts more.

* * *

Her cell phone rings when her feet hit the sidewalk two hours later. The afternoon sun beats down on her through the wind-shaken leaves of the maple trees lining the street.

"Hello?" she says tentatively when she sees that the caller ID is an unknown number.

"The Martian girl's here," Jade drawls without preamble, but it does little to mask her blatant annoyance at the situation. "Just sitting here. In my apartment. She won't go away until you get here, so _please_ hurry up and get here and stop telling everyone in your dumb hero clique where I live, or I'll be forced to personally remove the 'peace' part of 'peace and quiet.'"

"I didn't tell her anything," Artemis starts to say, but Jade has already hung up.

She stares affrontedly at the phone in her hand for a good few seconds before blowing her hair out of her face and starting off toward the zeta tube.

* * *

Jade gives her a look that's half-deadpan and half-vitriol when she gets back to the apartment twenty minutes later. Artemis shoots her back a roll of the eyes that ends on the sight of M'gann, seated on the couch with her knees tightly joined and her fingers twiddling in her lap. Her bright purple sweater splashes color onto the black fabric around her.

"Uh, hey, Megs," Artemis greets her with a slight falter: M'gann is in her Caucasian skin.

M'gann looks immediately relieved to see her.

"Artemis!" she exclaims with an uncertain smile. "I'm so glad you're here; I was worried I…"

She catches herself and bites her lip. Jade doesn't miss it, however.

"Worried you weren't going to survive a couple of hours with the most feared assassin in the world?" she finishes for her. "I'd be worried, too, Martian."

"Come on, Jade; lay off," Artemis says with a frown.

Jade shrugs. "The friend of my sister is my enemy. That's how it works. Always. Or I guess in the speedster's case it was my _plaything_." She smirks, gazing with nostalgia in her eyes at the opposite wall. "Oh, sis, remember that time I told him I'd eat his feet for breakfast if he didn't get you the right color corsage for your prom? Those were the days."

"Yeah, Jade, they were," Artemis says pointedly, shoving at her shoulder as she passes. "Can you leave us alone now, please?"

Jade mocks a curtsy and slips to the bedroom with a mutter over her shoulder of, "Try not to reunite too loudly; Lian's down for her nap."

"Sorry about her." Artemis grimaces when the door closes. "She's kind of the… worst. Ever."

"It's fine," M'gann says softly, looking at her hands.

Artemis sighs and takes a seat beside her, folding her arms and half-glaring at the opposite wall.

There's a pause before M'gann gets up the guts to speak. "How have you… I mean, how're things?"

Artemis shrugs stiffly.

"Fine," she replies in a mumble. "Y'know, they're not as totally miserable as they were at Christmas and Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving and New Year's."

M'gann lets out a soft "oh."

"Just got back from seeing Bart," Artemis continues. She doesn't know why; she doubts M'gann cares. "He seems fine. Which I guess is good. One less thing to have on my conscience."

She leans back into the couch cushions and looks over at the other girl. There's a clock ticking in the kitchen, the only noise beyond the occasional rustling coming from Jade's bedroom. She has no idea where Roy is.

"So, what's the occasion?" she finally asks, unable to dampen the bitterness in her voice. "Feeling sorry for the new black sheep of the Team?"

M'gann visibly winces.

"We're _sorry_, Artemis," she insists, sounding pained. "But you didn't leave Kaldur much of a choice."

"So you agree with him, then," Artemis mutters, clenching her arm. "Comforting."

M'gann huffs.

"Please don't be like that." She takes a breath. "It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for you. I came over because there's…"

Artemis glances up. Words are apparently failing M'gann, whose face is halfway turned toward hers but whose eyes don't seem to want to dare meet hers. Her lip looks red from being bitten with anxiety.

"I just… there's something that I think you should see," she finally blurts out, but quietly, like she's hoping Artemis won't hear her. "Do you remember that – training simulation we all did together? The one I…"

She trails off, her expression matching that of one who had swiftly and unwillingly reopened a wound.

"Yeah," Artemis says, more gently than she'd expected. "I mean, I was only there for an hour, but. Yeah." She laughs emptily. "Not exactly the most forgettable Team bonding day ever."

"Did you and Wally ever… talk about it?" M'gann asks.

Artemis, taken aback, has to take a beat to register the question, but she shakes her head.

"He never liked to," she replies. "I'm pretty sure he just wanted to forget it ever happened. Why?"

M'gann's face darkens.

"He… made me promise never to show you," she whispers. _That_ certainly gets Artemis's full attention. "Only a little while after we all woke up, he started pounding on my door – at the Cave. When I opened it, he was – I don't think I'd ever seen him look so serious. Not then. Afterwards, a few times, but – never before. I was scared he was angry at me, for a second. His eyes were all red. I think he'd been crying. Conner said he heard him… in the bathroom." Her eyebrows twist a little and her mouth seems to shudder. "His whole mind seemed so… tense. He – he just grabbed my arms and looked straight at me and said—"

When she speaks, an echo of Wally, his voice hoarse and young, blooms out at the back of Artemis's mind and muffles M'gann's entirely.

"M'gann, please, _please_ promise me you won't show Artemis any of what I – just. _Please_. Don't _ever_show her how I was. I'm serious. I don't ever want her to—look, it was all just an extension of _your_emotions, right? So it wasn't even real and she doesn't need to know, so – don't ever tell her, or show her, or… _Please_, please, please. I don't want her to know. Promise."

M'gann inhales deeply.

"So I promised," she finishes. "What else was I supposed to do? He looked like he was ready to get down on his knees and _beg_ me, and I – his mind was_ right there_, and it was such a wreck I didn't even want to have it _near_ me. But now I… with what you've been going through, and what you must be feeling—"

Artemis waits patiently for her to finish, or maybe it's just leftover shock from hearing one of M'gann's memories, a side of Wally she'd only seen once or twice, when he'd jolted awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and refused to let go of her until the morning came.

"I just think it's time you saw," M'gann finally says.

"Saw _what_, Megs?" Artemis prompts her, unable to take it any longer.

M'gann inhales slowly, exhales slowly. Automatically, because she knows what might be coming, Artemis starts to match her pace – she's had her fair share of telepathic jamborees with M'gann, so by now, the process is a familiar one.

M'gann turns her torso slightly so that she's facing Artemis, tucking one knee up onto the couch. She lifts her hands, halting them on Artemis's temples by the tips of her fingers. Artemis keeps breathing evenly, but her heart is thumping erratically.

"If you want me to stop at any time," M'gann murmurs, "Tell me."

"Yeah."

M'gann nods once and closes her eyes. After a moment, Artemis does, too.

For a second, everything is dark, but then M'gann's mind takes hers in its hand and her vision is overwhelmed by the slightly blurred sight of snow and tundra.

The memory is from M'gann's perspective – Artemis can hear the rest of the Team's chaotic thoughts rattling around in her mind, but M'gann's too busy concentrating on attaching an alien gun to the bioship.

_Get inside!_

Artemis jumps – that's _her_ voice, six years ago. _I'm almost there!_

Her heart (or is it M'gann's?) starts to hammer and anxiety courses through her urgency. She has to work faster; Artemis is in danger.

Danger! Something sparks in the back of her mind following the sound of two ships crashing into each other by Artemis's hand. The archer is running back to the bioship, safe, but something sinister is crawling up in her wake.

M'gann whirls, her mind scrambling.

_Artemis!_ she thinks as sharply as she can, in a mental shriek. _Behind you!_

Artemis's mind spikes in terror against hers and M'gann and Artemis both watch, cold with fright, as the younger Artemis – as if in slow motion – digs her heels into the snow, turns with her bow raised and her eyes wide and frightened and her heart galloping, every bit of the frightful uncertainty of youth beating rapidly against their temples.

She stands little chance. Her arm has just finished the bowstring back when the disintegration ray engulfs her. Her clothes and her skin vanish and her skeleton stays poised for less than a second, but then that's gone, too – and so is she.

No blood. No pain, no body, no warning, no goodbye. She's just _gone_, erased from the world, like she'd simply ceased—_Artemis's mind jolts_—to exist.

Artemis isn't sure if it's her stomach or M'gann's that drops sickeningly at the sight.

"_Artemis!_"

If that sound, that single name delivered in that single broken and horrified voice, is enough to crack the frigid air, it's the next voice that shatters it entirely.

"_ARTEMIS!_"

Artemis's blood goes instantly cold and still, and a fearsome chill shoots through her at the sound. It hardly seems human.

Her and M'gann's eyes swivel, as one, downwards – where Wally is standing, buckled forward, with a stricken expression on his young face. His mind echoes, over and over, in an endless string, every syllable punching into the mind link at an impossible and desperate speed like his running feet:_Nonononononononononono_.

It's a precursor to the staggering wave that slams into her next from him: grief, and shock, and sickness, and confusion, and an all-consuming rage like none she could ever have imagined. The telepathic link is, for the briefest of seconds, overloaded by all of it, slipping into white noise, but it's back up again just in time to receive the emotions of the others: emptiness from Conner, utter silence from Dick, sorrowful resolve from Kaldur – and it's all quiet, all paralyzed with shock, but Wally's is a tempest.

"They're _dead_," he shouts. His fists shake at his sides. His voice is raw and wrathful and dark, a shattering departure from his laughter and his drawl, and it _scares_ her – scares them all – because he's hardly Wally now. "_Every single _alien, if it's the last thing I do!"

His voice breaks on the last syllable. Artemis watches from M'gann's eyes as the scene changes – now she's doubled over and crying until she can't breathe and it's making it difficult to steer the bioship, but she has to; she _has_ to.

But it's nothing, nothing, compared to the sounds that Wally's making.

Artemis looks through M'gann at him – he's screaming, too grief-stricken to shed any tears or trawl up any semblance of speech, and he's beating his fists against the bioship walls and growing louder and more anguished with every blow. M'gann flinches and cries harder, and Artemis with her, until Wally finally, eventually, goes totally silent, hunched over, his fingers splayed out and his teeth gritted and his eyes wrenched closed. Somehow, it's louder than the shouting had been.

_No_. They are coming slower now. _No. No. No._

Everything blurs again – when it comes into focus, it's the ruins of the Hall of Justice around her, and Wally's mental voice, now delirious with wild hope, thunders across the link with unstoppable exuberance: _This thing doesn't disintegrate – it _teleports_! Artemis is alive!_

And then they're somewhere Artemis doesn't know: the red-tinted, fearsome bowels of the alien mothership, and the two of them watch as Wally clutches their arms and tries to soothe their mind with promises of Artemis, but Conner is dead. (And Artemis could choke, seeing him so close, so young, so _stupid_, his gripping fingers those of a blazing ghost she doesn't fully recognize.)

_My mind is clearer now. There is no detention facility_, the Martian Manhunter thinks somberly, and Wally's eyes shoot to him, hard and defensive. _No prisoners to rescue. Our mission holds no purpose._

Wally, short and skinny and small next to the Martian Manhunter, whose cape is presently fisted in his shaking hands, hammers out denial that borders on delusion, his face wrenched with ferocity.

_No. You're wrong!_ his mind insists – shouts – _begs_. _The zeta radiation _proves_ she's alive! She's—_

Dick has to grab him, yank him off, locking eyes with his best friend with a resolute expression far too intense for his almost childish face. Wally's eyes, in contrast, are wild and fierce, cycling through a storm of emotion almost strong enough to cripple M'gann's already fragile link altogether, but something is starting to slowly crumble at the very back of them.

_Stop it, KF! I've been scanning for League and Team signals since we got inside – they're not… here._

Grief seems to clench even him at the sound of his words, and Wally's mind starts to slow to a dull throb.

_Artemis is gone._

And then it halts. It stills, and settles, and sinks. Dick is telling him something else, something about how the mission still holds purpose; and M'gann's mind huddles around words that she feebly tries to pass to Wally as some sick offering of comfort: _New heroes will always rise to carry on._

The last few moments are even more surreal than the rest of it for Artemis: as M'gann gets back on her feet, despite her shaking knees, Dick and Martian Manhunter start to run down the remainder of the hall toward the core of the mothership. M'gann begins to follow – and Artemis with her, but they stop beside Wally, who has not moved. His eyes stare at the ground with a mix of blankness and desolation, and the green in them is dull now in the dark and unforgiving light.

Their hand rests on his shoulder and grasps it. He does not react. Though the contact only lasts for a second, and though she knows it's impossible, Artemis wills the fingers to stay there longer, wills them to lace with his and turn into only hers and try to ignite color in him again. But they don't. They slip off, and M'gann runs, and as she grows farther away, just before Wally seems to haul up the strength to follow her, his mind, red and savage and slowly unraveling into surrender, swiftly knocks only once more into her back.

It's over. She's watching the mothership fall to flames and ruin and she's trying to scrub out the echo of Wally's last thoughts before his bones had turned to ash: the summer, the sound of cicadas around him; his parents, and their embraces, and their smiles; and _Artemis_, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and laughing at something he doesn't understand, and now seems certain he never will.

Artemis feels the familiar sensation of falling backwards. When her mind lurches back into her again, dropped from a great height by the palm of M'gann's, the first thing she becomes conscious of is a single wet trail going from the corner of her right eye to the bottom of her chin.

She swipes it away in an instant, but the apartment around her is hazy – when she tries to blink it away, her face gets wetter, and it makes her furious.

"Why," she stutters out, rubbing her knuckles against her cheeks and mouth. "Why did you—"

"You think that you're losing your mind," M'gann says – and her voice is equally tearful, if not more so; Artemis can hardly blame her, having to relive the exercise that made her refuse to use even the mind link for nearly a month. "You think that you're alone, and that you're insane for feeling and acting the way you do, but all it is is _hope_, Artemis, and he felt it, too. He felt it before he even knew you."

"It's not the same," Artemis croaks. Her shoulders are shaking and a sob manages to break its way through, but she quiets any further slip-ups with a hand to her mouth. "It's not the _same_, Megs. That wasn't even _real_."

"But you don't understand," M'gann whimpers. "To us, it _was_. I _made_ everyone think it was real, so Wally – everything he _felt_ was real, because he believed you were really gone. Did you see him, Artemis? Did you see how he – it tore him _apart_, but then he started looking for _any_ chance that you could still be out there, waiting for him to just… _find_. I remember his mind there, Artemis. There was nothing in it but you."

"That's—" Artemis makes a choking noise that she guesses could pass for a laugh. "That doesn't seem healthy."

"You're the same, Artemis," M'gann whispers. "I showed you because it's… it's the _same_. Don't you remember how little he talked to you afterwards? How much attention he started paying to me? He wanted to forget about what he'd felt, what he'd _done_, because it _scared_ him. And I knew that, so I just… I let him. You know?"

Unexpectedly, she breaks off and pulls Artemis into a hug, dampening the shoulder of her t-shirt. Her nails dig into Artemis's skin, but not painfully. Artemis, however, makes no movement to return the embrace.

"I can't decide if I should tell you to… to learn from what you saw, and not let yourself get lost in trying to bring someone back who might really be gone, or… or tell you never to lose hope," she says. Her voice is shaking. "He loved you so _much_, Artemis; and I'm – I'm so _sorry_ I did that to him. To you. To _everyone_. I don't know if I can ever make it up to…"

"Megs, stop it," Artemis murmurs – but it's gentle. M'gann pulls away, her eyebrows upturned. "We were kids. We were just _kids_. It doesn't matter. We forgive you. You need to stop being so scared of yourself, because nobody's scared of you, M'gann."

M'gann's eyes start to well up. Artemis, knowing she's said the right thing, repeats it, genuinely, emphatically.

"Nobody's scared of you," she whispers.

M'gann hugs her for a long, long time.

* * *

It's only the next day, when she's lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, that Artemis understands exactly what M'gann had been trying to tell her.

Wally's hope, irrational or not, had swallowed him whole, turned him into someone he no longer knew. He had watched Artemis vanish before his eyes, out of his life, out of the world, just as she had blinked maybe once or twice and been told soon after that _he loved her_, and that was all. He had sprinted with desperation and a fierce love he barely comprehended through the end of the world, raging, blazing – just as she had, just as they all had watched the Reach encroach the Earth, watched the War World loom beside the moon – and still he had not forgotten her, or accepted any possibility that there was a world that existed, now, that did not have Artemis in it.

She's not sure if it's supposed to be a lesson or a comfort. But the sheer solidarity of their experiences – Wally, before he'd even known what it would mean, losing her; her, when she knew all too well what it would mean, losing him – floors her. She decides, at the end of it all, that she is finished with being broken over Wally, and she is finished with her rage, and she is finished with her hope – it hurts much less when she doesn't have any of that to go on.

She closes her eyes.

"_Let me walk you home._"

"_I'm fine, Wally. Quit hovering; it's weirding me out. I just… I need to go… walk somewhere._"

"_Then let me do it with you. I promise I won't say anything or bug you or – Artemis, I'm never gonna say this to you again, but… please._"

"_What for?_"

"_I just – I want to see you. Being alive. Being you. Is that so weird?_"

"_Uh, yes. Extremely. But – ugh. Just stay at least two steps behind me and don't say a word._"

"_Whatever. …Thank you._"

She wonders how she hadn't seen it sooner. She wonders what might have been different if she had.

* * *

"Nice shot," she snarks out when Roy's high density polyurethane foam bursts over the hostages instead of the bank robbers currently firing their guns up at the rafters where the two of them are crouched.

"Cut down on the smart talk, kid," Roy retorts, nocking another, normal, arrow. "I meant to do that."

"Props for the save." She snorts, and her hands fumble a little when she nocks her own arrow into her old collapsible bow, which squeaks a little from lack of use. She shoots a smoke arrow at the feet of the bank robbers just as a bullet whizzes past her cheek.

"You okay there?" Roy asks her, firing his own arrow at one of the thugs' hands, knocking his gun away. "I'd hate to see you getting your eye shot out."

"Yeah, I'll _bet_ you would," she deadpans back. She takes care of the accomplice, shooting his gun aside until it skitters across the tile floor.

"I'm serious," Roy insists, but his smirk confirms that he is not at all serious. "What would the world do without that face?"

Artemis, tossing her hair over her shoulder, leaps down from their perch and collides foot-first with one of the gunmen's faces. It feels more than a little satisfying to bring out one of her old moves again, and he doesn't seem to be complaining once he's lying unconscious on the floor and his pal is putting up his hands in surrender.

"Subtle," Roy grunts from behind her when he lands as well. "Good luck washing that off the leather."

"Isn't the first time and won't be the last," she retorts, simpering at him with smugness. "These boots were made for kickin'."

"Even _more_ subtle." Roy snorts, putting his arrow back in his quiver and collapsing his bow. Artemis follows suit. "All right, I'll handle the first guy; you take the second."

"Dividing the workload very fairly," Artemis grouses, but not without a smile.

She turns away from Roy's crouching form to deal with the second bank robber, but instead she finds the barrel of a gun in her face.

_Oh._

"Well, now I feel stupid," she mutters. The guy's hand is shaking and his face is sweaty.

"T-Turn around!" he orders. "Hands on your—"

Before he can finish, something whizzes by and blasts him in the wrist, causing him to yell and stumble back and drop the gun. Artemis picks it up immediately and points it at him with steadiness, but he's still shouting with pain, clutching his injured hand.

She glances to her left. There's a charred spot on the floor with a flume of smoke twisting up from it.

"Uh, Roy, since when do your arrows have lasers?" she asks.

But Roy doesn't answer her.

She dares to turn her head slightly to see him gawking up at the farthest window on the same level as the rafters. The hostages are all whimpering, wiping foam off of themselves and grimacing.

There's a boy standing above them all, with a shaved head and a scowl angrier by far than anything she's seen Roy's face even vaguely imitate. His prosthetic arm whirs and glints in the moonlight.

"Roy, I think that's you," Artemis says.

"Give me a break," the boy above them scoffs in a voice identical to Roy's. He leaps down, landing on two feet and one hand, scowling at the ground. "We couldn't be any more different."

Roy groans from behind her.

"Jeez, Arsenal; a little more _warning_ next time would be nice."

"What are you griping about, Arrow? I saved your sidekick's neck, didn't I?"

"Whoa, whoa," Artemis interjects, tempted to aim the gun at this little punk instead. "Next time you call me sidekick I'll be kicking _your_ sides; got it?"

"Artemis," Roy grumbles, and Artemis takes that as a cue to step forward and tie up the still blubbering gunman with a computer cable. "That's Arsenal. The guy I was cloned from. Sometimes he follows me around because he gets lonely."

"Give me a break!" Arsenal scoffs. "First of all, I don't _get_ lonely; second of all, even if I did, which I_don't_, you are the _last_ person I would come running to. I'm just protecting your stupid city now that you're too busy playing house with an international criminal wanted for too many counts of murder for me to count on two hands."

Artemis snickers and Roy shouts at her to shut up.

She straightens, brushing her hands off, and finally gets a good look at the boy known as Arsenal. He's significantly scrawnier than Roy, but he compensates for it with sinewy muscles and an expression probably capable of striking fear in the heart of Kaldurs; his domino mask is sharp, and his costume is like a duller red version of Roy's. They may have looked alike once, but this kid seems to have tried everything within his power to eradicate Roy's legacy – including, apparently, shaving his head.

"Ignore the angry Q-tip," Roy mutters to her. "He gets sensitive about admitting he's miserable without me to yell at all the time."

Sirens start to sound outside. At the noise, Artemis turns her head, but when she swivels it back around again to ask Arsenal exactly what he's doing there anyway, she's surprised to find that he's already gone.

"Uh," she grunts. "Does he do that often?"

Roy stretches. "Well, he _did_ try to assassinate Luthor once. Plus I can't even _count_ how many times I've had to bail that punk out of jail for backtalking an officer or interfering with police business. You think I'm bad? He makes me look like I should be canonized."

"Oh, he's delightful," Artemis says sagely, which causes Roy to stifle a laugh.

"Yeah. Real hit at parties," he mutters. "We'd better get out of here; c'mon."

"You feel like chili?" she asks him as they sprint across the rooftops back toward the apartment. The night is balmy with the onset of spring, and they can see the police cars speeding by down on the street.

"Maybe if I feel like dying," he retorts. "In other words, _no_. I vote that ramen noodle place on Fortieth Avenue."

"Fine, but you're buying," Artemis says, jumping with spread legs to the next building. Her lungs are burning, but this is the most alive she ever feels.

"Jeez, get a job," Roy chastises her, and she lets out a short chuckle.

It's been a long time since she's laughed – really laughed. Somehow eliciting the sound, and the unabashed tears and wrinkled nose and doubling over that come with it, seems to be something only Wally had ever had a talent for.

She's okay, she thinks unexpectedly to herself as she and Roy slurp on noodles while in costume, despite the stunned expression of their server. This is okay. She's miles from the Team, miles from the memories associated with it; she's far, far off from chasing vengeance and blindly following whatever piece of hope happens to drop into her path; she's got bruises on her elbows and a headache and crusted red on her lip from a nosebleed, but this is all okay.

She'll go back sometime, in a month, in a year, when seeing the hologram doesn't prompt her to reach her fingers toward the imitations of the ones she hopes will someday be there, someday be tangible enough to hold hers, if she tries just one more time, one more time, when no one is looking.

She's having lunch with Zatanna tomorrow. Going to the zoo with M'gann this weekend. Babysitting Lian on Thursday. Bart's getting out of the hospital on Friday.

She doesn't really know what it is she wants anymore. She stirs the noodles with her chopsticks and mentally thanks Roy for not saying anything and feels her heart twinge just slightly when she realizes she's forgotten Wally's favorite color, forgotten the way his breathing had sounded under her ear at night, forgotten the sound he made when he cried, and even more so the sound he made when he laughed.

She opens her mouth to, maybe, tell Roy that she's not sure if she even misses Wally anymore because there's hardly anything in her memory for her to miss, but then her cell phone rings.

She fumbles around for it. Roy watches, blinking, with a mouthful of noodles.

The caller ID is _Strange, Adam_.

She almost doesn't answer it. But her thumb swipes across the answer button and she brings the phone to her ear, cradling it in her shoulder.

"Yes?" she says a bit coldly.

"Artemis," Strange replies immediately, sounding breathless. "I'm so glad I got ahold of you; I've been trying to get in touch with you for days! We did it. We did it; _I_ did it! You have to get to the Watchtower as soon as you can; we—"

"Slow down, Strange," Artemis interrupts him in a voice louder than she'd expected. Roy's attention is fully on her now, but she barely notices, setting down her chopsticks, turning out of her seat. "What's going on?"

"I figured it out," he tells her in a jubilant shout. "Artemis, my machine; it – it works! I've found out a way to stabilize it and the chance is only 10% now; I did it; I _did_ it! We can get him back! We're going to get him back!"

There's a thud and a rustle and then the sound of another voice.

"Artemis." It's Conner. "Are you there?"

Artemis tries to say yes, but all that comes out is a short, barely audible rasp.

"Okay, good." Of course he'd heard it. "You have to get over here to understand. Kaldur's given you authorized access to the Watchtower again. We need you here right away, all right?"

His voice slows, and quiets, and, for a moment, even he sounds winded, exhilarated, disbelieving.

"This is it," he murmurs.

"Old boyfriend?" Roy asks dryly when Artemis hangs up a moment later, staring wide-eyed at nothing.

She gulps.

"Yeah," she whispers. Her hand shakes unstoppably when she shoves the phone back into her utility belt. She nods at nothing, wondering why, instead of feeling ecstasy, or any semblance of relief or happiness, she just feels like she's going to be sick.

"Yeah," she repeats in an even hoarser voice, and then she stumbles to her feet, knocking her bowl to the ground, and bolts.

She sprints in a harum-scarum scramble for the zeta tube, five blocks away. Roy shouts after her, but she hardly hears him – she hardly hears anything at all.


	11. Chapter 11

**This is the longest chapter yet – clocks in at around 9,000 words. And I don't really have much to say this time around except... well, this is it. The big "it." **

**See you guys next time and I really, deeply, sincerely, _desperately_, with all my heart and soul, hope you all like this.**

* * *

Despite_ the leftover storm thundering and howling around her, Artemis could only really describe Paris as quiet. The streets were empty and the air, in spite of its turbulence, was clear and clean and welcoming. She blew out a breath, smirking with private relief as she watched Wally deactivate the MFD under the Eiffel Tower, straightening with his hands proudly perched on his hips._

_She collapsed her bow with professional briskness, pressing a finger to her ear and turning away._

_"Omega Squad has—"_

_There was a mouth on hers before she could finish, and she froze for a moment, blinking, her hand still hovering at her ear. Wally's eyes were closed, but she could feel him smiling against her teeth, his hands dropping to rest on her hips, patiently waiting for her to come to her senses._

_She loosened after a second, gripping his shoulder in her hand and humming contentedly. He tugged her closer, flush against her, warm and broad and welcoming, buzzing with the same perpetual energy whose absence had forbidden her from falling asleep on the sub for the first month._

_"Omega Squad, repeat transmission!" Snapper Carr was saying into her ear. "O...mega?"_

_She reached up and switched it off before snaking her arms around Wally's neck, sighing softly through her nose. He was holding her tightly, but not to the point of discomfort, and the noises he was slipping into her mouth were awakening every inch of her, filling up every cold patch of Tigress's emptiness._

_He framed her face with his hands, and she was sure, for a second, that she hadn't been so happy in a long time, because she was home, and Tigress had been hung up to gather the dust she deserved, and she'd woken up to the sight of Wally's face this morning, and his arm had been slung across her stomach and he'd been curled around her, and his nose had twitched a few times and his feet had kicked at the sheets before he'd woken up, grinning sleepily at her, burying his face in the space between her shoulder and her neck._

_She linked her hands at the nape of his neck and laughed onto his tongue. The windstorm around them was beginning to ebb, only now occasionally rustling their hair and the summer trees._

_He finally withdrew, looking down at her with low eyelids and an easy, tilted smile._

_"Look," he said quietly, brushing some of her hair out of her face. "I know we promised each other we'd get out of this game..."_

_Something swelled inside of her, buoyant and breathless._

_"But maybe we can have our life together and play hero, too," she finished, her face splitting into what had to be the widest grin she'd permitted herself in a long, long time, discounting the one that had caused her cheeks to ache only the night before, when she'd tackled Wally into an embrace after the summit was over, laughing and panting and generally looking like an idiot._

_He leaned down and kissed her again and Artemis was sure that if, for any reason, this was her last moment on Earth, she wouldn't mind it very much at all._

* * *

The Watchtower seems infinitely larger than she remembers. It yawns over her, dark and magnificent and looming, bearing down an intimidation she is not sure she has ever encountered.

"_Recognized. Artemis. B07._"

She steps out of the zeta tube and her boots make a distinct thudding noise on the ground. She's still out of breath from running, and some of her hair has fallen from the ponytail and is presently hanging in her eyes.

She pulls her mask off. It feels cold and cumbersome in her unsteady hands.

"Artemis," Kaldur greets her from the other side of the main room, his feet planted firmly in front of the wide windows overlooking the stars. At the notice he takes, the rest of the Team – Conner and M'gann to the left of him; Dick and Adam Strange to the right – turns in unison.

Artemis opens her mouth to say something, but no words come to her. Her brow furrows, and her body hesitates to step any closer, tugged backward by the still-present sensation of bitterness, of uncertainty, of being unwelcome.

This all dispels, however, when M'gann releases Conner's hand and flies across the floor to crash a hug into her. Artemis doesn't stumble back, but her arms freeze, and she blinks protuberantly at M'gann out of the corner of her eye.

"We missed you," M'gann whispers, squeezing her shoulders slightly.

Artemis is tempted to make some comment about how maybe they shouldn't have suspended her in the first place, then, but there seems to be no room in her for spite anymore. All of it had tumbled out of her fingertips and heels the second she'd hung up her cell phone only a little while ago.

"Shucks," she mutters back in halfhearted humor.

When she glances up, Dick waves at her. She and M'gann part and walk side-by-side to join the others. If she squints, and if she tilts her head the right way, Dick looks shorter and skinnier and his smile wider; and Kaldur's eyes look less dim, and Conner's angular jaw less harsh.

She comes to a stop beside Dick, whose expression is unreadable. M'gann floats back to Conner automatically, her fingers brushing his elbow.

"Artemis," Strange is in the middle of exclaiming, elated, his hands flailing with gestures she doesn't even have the time to register. His eyes are bright and manic and his smile is unstoppable. "We're bringing him back. I found the way; I found it!"

"Yeah, I heard you on the phone," she tells him with a tinge of brusqueness she hadn't been able to bridle. Her eyes rove over the faces of her teammates. "Do Mary and Rudy know?"

She doesn't know why that's the first question on her mind. Maybe it's the echo of Mary's unrestrained weeping over the phone, or – when she'd gone over to pick up some of Wally's things – the sight of Rudy clutching a framed photograph of his son in a black mortarboard and graduation robe and bright red tie, beaming and waving at the camera as the sun ignited his hair and his pride.

"Yeah." Dick's voice drifts in. "The Flash talked to them. We've been keeping him informed, too. They're... they're on board."

"Everything's all set," Strange babbles on, his grin never faltering. "All of the right parties have been informed; I've done a hundred stability checks and quick tests and put in enough safety failsafes to sink a ship, basically; frabjous day, calloo, callay, et cetera!"

Artemis gives a start.

"You know Carroll?" she asks, bewildered.

She hadn't thought it was possible for him to light up any more, but the man's smile puts Christmas trees to shame.

"Of course I do!" he exclaims with zest. "Didn't Miss Martian tell you about the time I distracted a bunch of Rannian soldiers by reciting the—"

"Perhaps the story can wait for another time," Kaldur suggests pointedly, stepping forward. It's only then that Artemis notices his hair has grown back to its normal cut, leaving no trace of the sharp and uncanny style he'd had while undercover.

"Oh! Right," Strange says, looking comically chastened like a child being scolded. "Right, right, right."

"Explain everything in the greatest detail you can, please, doctor," Kaldur implores him. "Not all of us have been... entirely privy to your research."

It's true – Strange has been doing most of his work on private, and on his own time. Artemis is fairly certain that the only person who's been keeping regularly updated with his progress is Dick, since he'd been the one to consult him in the first place.

Strange nods with unbridled enthusiasm. The explosive pride he seems to be taking in his machine is almost contagious and unequivocally endearing.

"All right, so," he begins, and claps his hands together.

"I call this thing a zetatron boom tube – not my most creative moment, but it makes the function pretty intuitive. This baby combines zeta radiation – which can access space – with chronotron radiation – which can access time – and gives them the stability and backing power to combine properly and therefore be able to tap into other dimensions, thanks to the boom tube tech from the Father Box. The chronotron radiation was strengthened from samples I took from Impulse's time machine.

"Here's how this is going to work: It's a speed trail that Wally's trapped in, so it's the force of new speed trails that's going to tug him on out. The machine opens the door, but the speed trails, and their kinetic energy, are going to be the things to pull him through it."

"And how are we going to make new speed trails, exactly?" Conner inquires.

Strange brightens visibly at the question.

"Glad you asked," he says. "We'll need both the Flash and Kid Flash to move in a loop at the same speed they did when Wally ceased. They'll pass through the tube itself, which will be set up in approximately the same place they were running a year ago, to create new speed trails that should sort of act like a path for Wally to follow."

"But how will they avoid being taken where he is if the tube will be on as they run through it?" M'gann asks with concern.

"Oh, this thing's one-way," Strange explains with a wave of his hand. "It can only take things out; it can't put them there." He snorts just slightly. "You kidding? Building it with dual accessibility would've taken me _years_."

"And Wally will avoid getting sucked into another speed trail... _how_, exactly?" Dick's voice, though just an octave higher with an unidentifiable emotion, remains remarkably steady.

"Simple," Strange replies. "Since he's already there, it's not like he can get pulled in any further. And these new dual speed trails will act as a slingshot, essentially. They'll catch onto him and the zetatron boom tube will vault him forward, with enough force to break him out of his plane entirely."

Artemis doesn't have to work hard to absorb it all – it seems unfitting, how simple it all is for her to understand. She's spent the last year – _and she realizes, swiftly, with a hitch of breath, that it will be one year in four days_ – expecting any explanation miraculous enough to dredge him out of oblivion to be more complex and convoluted than she could imagine, but here it all is, laid out in front of her in the comprehensive, sincere words of a single young scientist whose only passion had been bringing them hope.

It's drawing the breath out of her, slowly but inexorably, until she's sure she has no use for it.

"He's going to be okay," Strange tells her with a gentleness in her voice that throws her. "He's just going to come... bolting back out, like no time's passed for him. Like nothing's changed! Good as new."

_Like nothing's changed. _It takes every ounce of composure she has not to lose her footing at the thought.

"So..." she croaks in a voice that sounds far too fragile to be her own. "Then, me hearing him in the zeta tube..."

Strange seems to come gradually down from his ebullient adrenaline high, looking to her with a softening expression. He seems almost sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You know, after you told me about that, I looked into things and it's..." He shrugs loosely, tilting his mouth with thought. "Not something my kind of science, or any kind, I guess, can really explain. Y'see, zeta radiation's all around us. It's constantly firing off to other places we don't even know or imagine. Its capabilities are indescribable, quite frankly. I know it's not going to make much sense, empirically, and it feels pretty odd for me to say it, as a scientist, but... your wires might keep crossing because maybe all he needs to nudge into our world again is... an anchor."

Artemis's eyes drift away from him, down to her feet. Something wells up inside of her, just for a second, something like the tears she can't really remember how to shed, but it's gone in an instant. It doesn't quite flatter her to imagine Wally scrambling through a speeding abyss and stretching his arms out further whenever he sees her, whenever he thinks of her hard enough – it just makes her impossibly sad.

"And Eduardo?" she hears herself ask.

Strange shrugs at that one.

"Who knows what kinds of planes he has to jump through to get from place to place," he replies. "It's not outrageous to assume he might've passed through the place where Wally is. And factoring in how much Wally probably wants to get home... I don't know. Logically, it doesn't make sense. But maybe he's just following whatever pieces of you he can get ahold of. It's not like he has much else where he is."

"Which is... where?" M'gann asks softly, voicing the question that's been in the back of all of their throats for longer than they'd care to dwell on.

Strange's lips quirk, and he lets out a weary but contented sigh, his hands slipping into his pockets.

"I guess we'll just have to ask him," he murmurs back.

Before she can say anything (though she doesn't really know what she _would_ say, since coherent thought is failing her completely), Artemis feels a hand grip her arm. She looks up, half-surprised and instinctively affronted, to find that it belongs to Dick, who is staring at her through his domino mask with desperation.

"You up for a quick little patrol?" he asks a little shakily. "I volunteer to buy you whatever ridiculous snack foods you'll _no doubt_ wind up craving at the most inconvenient possible time."

She stares at him.

"_Excuse_ me?"

"I insist," he interrupts. His airiness is forced. He's already gently nudging her toward the zeta tube. "We'll be back in time for more science talk; cross my heart."

"Stop it – _stop_," she tells him, slipping away and staring at him indignantly. "What's your problem? A _patrol_, at a time like this? Did you even _hear_ any of what Strange just—?"

"Uh, actually..." Strange clears his throat and silences her; she must have whipped her head over to look at him with accusation, because he immediately puts his hands up and blanches slightly. "Th-The machine'll take a day or two to set up. We have to transport it to the Arctic and get it running properly, and... do some last-minute checks on it, make sure it's going to run smoothly, wait until Kid Flash is out of the hospital..."

He shrugs at her helplessly and she grimaces, but her raised shoulders lower slightly, and her drumming, seasick heart with it.

"Right," she mutters, feeling, for lack of a better word, stupid. "Of course. Sorry."

"We can use the bioship to move it," M'gann offers with alacrity. "Its endurance is highly developed; I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem."

"Oh, perfect," Strange says, clearly relieved. "Would extra passengers weigh it down? I built a zeta tube in the Arctic for myself, at the site of the ceasing, so I could get there easily while I was making some of the calculations, but, uh... sometimes excess exposure can _kinda_ give me migraines."

Artemis is gratified to know that she's not the only one who's startled by the fact that Strange has apparently built his own zeta tube in the _Arctic_, of all the obscure places in the world.

"You have _got_ to stop this whole 'not being on the Team' thing," Dick says, no doubt catching sight of her stunned expression. "You miss out on all the best developments. I guess the only safe alternative is for you to stay, _forever_."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she growls back at him in the dryest voice she's capable of using.

He chuckles silently through his nose.

If anyone else had so glibly asked her to go on patrol with them when they were both on the brink of bringing back a ghost that had driven a rift between them for nearly a year, she would no doubt have rejected them, punctuating it with a well-aimed kick to the face. But this is Dick, and she knows Dick well enough to understand that whenever he _looks_ like he's doing something utterly blithe and dumbfoundingly insulting, he has at least some obnoxious scrap of a good reason for it. She's had to endure years of his roundabout antics and baffling methods for handling sensitive situations, having him occupy her fire escape at four in the morning whenever he and Zatanna would have a particularly bad falling-out; being finagled into getting shawarma with him at the crack of dawn because he simply didn't feel like acknowledging that it was the first of April; shrieking aloud when she would glance up from her homework at the Palo Alto apartment to see him perched on the windowsill, grinning with sharkish glee at her terror, because, rather than calling, rather than writing, rather than speaking, Dick Grayson shows how much he misses someone by the lengths to which he goes to invade their private life when he can't take it anymore.

"Let's see, so... today's the sixteenth," Strange muses, tapping his chin. "So how about everyone reports to the Arctic in three days. Give you all some time to... prepare, I guess. I know it's tempting to just shoot over there now, but it's going to take just a little more time. We go live on June twentieth. This Tuesday."

Artemis doesn't register the date right away. By the time she does – by the time her head snaps up – Strange has turned his attention to M'gann and Kaldur, with whom he is talking animatedly, consulting a clipboard of notes in his hands and rattling off information about kinetic energy, wind funnels, getting in touch with the Flash right away.

Her eyes pass, fleetingly, over Conner – he's standing with his head bowed and his jaw clenched and his arms folded so tightly that she fears his own strength may break him.

She opens her mouth to ask him if he's all right, but Dick snatches her attention again.

"C'mon," he mutters, jerking his head slightly, but it has much more entreatment in it than insistence. "We're way overdue on catching up, anyway. We have _got_ to discuss that new haircut."

By all accounts, she should be telling him to back off. In the past forty-five minutes, all of the messy and asymmetrical coping she's managed to drag herself through, heavy foot by heavy foot, has been yanked into unraveling, and because of it, because of how little she can recall of the birthday cards Wally had given her, of the way he'd tied his shoes and jogged through public parks on foggy evenings, terror has yet to leave the forefront of her mind.

But maybe it's that sensation of suddenly having the earth yanked out from under her, and that sensation of only just now noticing how impenetrable the walls she's had to build to move in with her life may be, that prods her into saying, "Okay."

Dick's face splits into a grin staggering in its gratitude, and the both of them stride off for the zeta tubes with legs moving in perfect unison. Dick pivots around on one foot when they're halfway there.

"Don't wait up!" he calls. "The lady needs a breather."

She has no idea how he'd known that, especially because even _she_ hadn't, not until right then.

"Ease up a little, Dick," she hisses through her gritted teeth. She moves to reattach her mask, but Dick's fingers slip into the trajectory of her wrist and halt her.

She stares at him. His smile looks a little stiffer now.

"Just hold off on that for a second," he whispers, stepping into the zeta tube and winking. "Meet you in Gotham."

"Duh," she mutters, but he's already half-gone before he can hear her.

"_Recognized. Nightwing. B01._"

_Artemis_, M'gann's mind bumps against hers with concern. _Why are you… why are you leaving? This is what you've been working toward for a _year_ now; where are you going?_

_I think he wants to talk_, Artemis's mind mumbles back. _And I just… I need some time to think. Some distance. Some air. I need—_

She's not sure what she's trying to say, so she settles for repeating herself.

_I need some air_.

Air is something that comes in limited quality _and_ quantity when she materializes in Gotham City, wrinkling her nose at the smell of urine in the phone booth. Dick is standing outside, holding the rickety door open and bowing.

"Ladies first," he coos.

Artemis snorts.

"_Your_ town," she replies. "_You_ go."

"Mmm, doesn't work as well when I don't have anywhere _to_ go," he retorts, but he lets go of the door and permits that she open it on her own. "Not without my supervillain escort, anyway."

"Hilarious," she says with no humor or inflection. "So, what's your angle here?"

"Ouch. Maybe I just want some quality time with my favorite archer?" he suggests, elbowing her lightly as they walk at a leisurely stroll toward the fire escape a few yards down the narrow alleyway. "Or maybe I wanna celebrate the imminent triumphant return of my best p… uh, my favorite speedster."

A zephyr of warm and softness uncharacteristic of Gotham strokes past them from the evening sky. The dawn will be there within the hour; she can see the sky starting to lighten slowly, can see the stars beginning to fade.

She glances over at Dick. Even she has to admit that he's looking significantly better than the last several months have shown him – he seems at home in the Nightwing costume, walking with languidly swinging arms and a certain alertness to his whisking steps. There's more color in his face, and he's far less gaunt-looking, and his hair seems to have been combed at some time in the last several weeks, and the upward tilt to his lips is natural, if not a little… ecstatically terrified, an emotion she's certain can only ever come from him.

"See, that's just telling me that you feel like messing me, since you're probably going through withdrawals," she grumbles. "Can I put my mask on now?"

"Nah," he replies breezily. "We're not patrolling; I lied. Follow me."

She ought to be indignant, but years of dealing with Dick have taught her to be resigned and nothing else whenever he does something particularly – dare she say it? – _dickish_.

He hops onto the ladder of the fire escape and scales it gracefully, swinging up by his arms and leaping from step to step. Artemis follows suit, but her agility is only slightly less than his – probably because, as a child, his was taught to him, and hers was forced into her.

She watches him above her and sees him vanish onto the roof. The wind tugs lightly at her hair and she mutters obscenities to herself in Vietnamese, but continues her ascent. When she reaches the top, she spots him seated on the edge of the building, crouched like some sort of voyeuristic gargoyle.

"Do I get _any_ hints about what we're doing here?" she calls testily. "Because I gotta say, I'm not really feeling the whole 'vanish to Gotham City to do nothing while breakthroughs are being made elsewhere' thing."

"Huh, that's surprising," he retorts. "Especially 'cause, back at the hub of all those breakthroughs? I'm pretty sure I have never seen you look so terrified in my life."

He glances over his shoulder at her with exaggerated pointedness, and she almost gives a start as she hauls herself up onto the roof level and storms over to join him – his mask is off.

"What do you know," she mutters churlishly, falling into a sitting position a few inches from him.

"Did you forget I'm a detective?" he asks her, but not unkindly. "I know a lot, Artemis. And even though you've been making it your mission in life to barely be around the Team at _all_ lately, I still know what your face does when it's scared. And the way it looked at the Watchtower a few minutes ago kinda made your response to the Reds look like a charming smile."

"You're one to talk," she snaps. "You didn't even _rejoin_ the Team until last month. Which was a _super_ dazzling move of you, by the way – abandoning all of us after your best friend died, I mean."

"But he _didn't_ die," Dick corrects her. "So that alleviates at least a _little_ of my guilt. And that's what I was working on finding proof of; you think I would've been able to find it if I'd played by the Team's rules? It was something I needed to do on my _own_, 'Mis; is that so bad?"

"You've been surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing, is all I'm saying," she mutters, but it doesn't come out vindictive – only tired, which could be construed as a good sign if she looks at it the right way.

Dick's chuckle is devoid of any sincerity. Out of the corner of her eye, Artemis sees his fingers curl, and sees his smile start to wobble.

"Hey, cut me some slack," he says in a tone clearly intended to sound amused, but that just sounds frail. "I come from the Batman School of Showing Emotion, so..."

"What are you saying, that you just switched to Batman mode and didn't turn it off for the past eleven months?" Her derision is blatant and she makes no efforts to dampen it. "What a convenient excuse."

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't react the way everyone wanted me to," he blurts out.

Artemis is briefly thrown by how little composure his voice suddenly has. She turns her head and watches as he, posture and all, starts to break down right in front of her, as if now unwilling or unable to support every reeled-in shout and stifled show of grief that has coursed through him since he'd vanished from the Watchtower a year ago, repeatedly telling himself, though it meant nothing, _business as usual, business as usual_, because nothing else could keep him from losing whatever scraps of self-control he still had left.

"I didn't have the time to be sad or broken or _any_ of that," he plows on. "You only do all of that when they're really gone; trust me, I _know_. But he wasn't. The second all of that smoke cleared, I _knew_ he wasn't, and I wasn't planning on coping when there was no _possible_ chance that someone like Wally could really be..."

The last of those words are gulped back down into whatever dark and fragile place they had burbled up from. He's gripping the edge of the building upon which he's sitting. His eyes are closed, and his smile is painfully contrived.

"So," he says. "Sorry for turning on my inner Batman to keep myself going, even after I swore myself I'd never do it again. Sorry for ditching a Team that was just going to be in mourning, after I'd spent the last six months screwing it up. And hey, I'm sorry for joking all the time now, but – I've got to stop being Batman. That was what nearly got you and Kaldur killed in the first place, _and_ Conner when the mountain went, and M'gann when Manta nabbed her, and _all_ of you. And you know who managed to get that through my thick skull? Wally."

Artemis swallows.

"He did have a knack for that kind of thing," she mumbles, unable to trawl up any other proper response.

"Yeah, which was _miraculous_, considering how thick _his_ skull was," Dick laughs, but it's humorless. He bows his head, and Artemis swears she sees something drop from his eye to his knee. "Or... _is_, now, I guess." He pauses to take a shuddering breath. "This is... gonna take some getting used to."

"Tell me about it," Artemis says darkly before she can think to stop herself. When Dick looks sharply over at her, she curls her fingers into fists and sets her jaw and doesn't allow herself to meet his eye.

"The truth comes out," he jokes softly. "You do seem remarkably... uh, _un_enthused."

Artemis flinches. She's not sure why. Maybe it's because, in the three months she had been on the sub, away from the sunlight and the air and the clouds, a certain adaptation to Wally's absence had grown on her like mold, and she'd had very little knowledge of how to eradicate it entirely even when his back was pressed to hers in battle and his heartbeat had drummed her awake. Maybe it's because setting Tigress aside to be forgotten, excised like a tumor, had been something Wally was going to be her link to, and because a single strike of time with him, a threadbare thirty-seven hours of compensating for speechlessness with action, had done very little to help her with that.

Maybe it's because she's spent the last three hundred and sixty-one days tripping and fumbling her way through some laughable imitation of the grieving process, and now that she's actually gotten what she's been clawing blindly in the dark for, now that the semblance of closure in her sorry excuse for a life has been upended, she really has no footing at all; and maybe it's because locking Tigress away is no longer so simple, and maybe it's because Wally is going to be just the same when he comes hurtling back into the world and she will be too different to look him in the eye, and maybe it's because Artemis no longer has any motivation for prying the chrysalis of Tigress open, because her life is _different_ now, and she isn't quite sure how to belong in it anymore. But more than that, she isn't sure how _Wally_ will belong in it anymore.

"I'm great," Tigress says, pulling on a simple little smile for the folks at home. "Never been happier in my life."

She's significantly alarmed when Dick throws his head back, facing the Gotham sky as if waiting for it to swallow him whole, and laughs.

It's not the same as the juvenile, impish cackle that had slinked through every corner where there were trouble or tricks to be found; and it's not the same as the fist-muffled snicker that had prompted her fifteen-year-old arms to lunge out in annoyance; and it's not the same as the unbridled giggling that had once permeated the halls of Gotham Academy, or the stuffy rooms of Wayne Manor, or the little corners of triumph all across the globe.

But it's him, somehow. It's just as she remembers it.

"You are _still_ the worst liar I've ever met," he finally wheezes, wiping a tear that she presumes he's trying to pass off as being caused by the laughter.

"And you are the worst person I've ever met," she retorts in earnest. "And Vandal Savage used to babysit me."

He lets out a few more bursting chuckles, clutching his abdomen. She has a feeling that the sound is more cathartic than it is genuinely amused.

"You're gonna be _fine_," he manages to get out, clasping her knee. She doesn't draw away. When she turns her head, she finds him looking her in the eye, blue and sincere and exhilarated and on the wing, with a smile on his face. Her stomach squirms and sinks. She wishes she could look as happy as he does. "He's not gonna be incompatible with your life, or with you, just because of everything that's happened. It's going to be very light on the _in_."

"It's not him I'm worried about," Artemis mutters.

Dick takes a moment to register her words before he slings his arm around her shoulders, scooting slightly closer. She sighs and drops her head to the side, her eyes roving up to the brightening sky. He jostles her gently, encouragingly, and pats her arm.

"You guys'll pull through this like you pull through everything else," he says, with something in his voice she can't identify. "You always do."

Artemis settles. She's never believed Dick less in her life.

* * *

"_Dick, there's something I gotta say._"

"_Wow, slow your roll, dude; make sure you have the ring ready first._"

"_Shut up. Look, I came here to tell you that I'm... I'm an idiot. I'm a real idiot._"

"_I'm sure you're right, but why?_"

"_Because of—I've been acting like a jerk these past few months. Side-effect of seeing my best pal lose his mind, I guess. Seeing the hero game turn nasty after Tula... seeing my girlfriend go under deep cover and risk death every day. The point is, I'm sorry._"

"_I'm... I'm sorry, too, Wally. I guess I – I spent so much time around Batman that I... I started to just – just follow the example I saw. Not exactly my smartest decision, but... on the bright side, I've had you around to yell at me and tell me how wrong I am, so for that, I guess I should be saying thanks._"

"_No, dude; I haven't done anything worth thanking. But I just... I figure it's time I stopped being scared of losing people – you, Mom, Dad, Artemis – and started getting back some of those dumb guts I had before that kind of stuff started mattering. I think... I think I want back in the game._"

"_Well, sir, I'm afraid we can only give you twenty-four hours to turn in your official decis—oof. What's the occasion for this hug? I'll need to know for my records._"

"_Shut up, dude. Just shut up for _five_ seconds. It might do you some good._"

"_There. That was six. Anyway, I'm pleased to welcome you back to the world of near-death experiences and undue interference with your pathetic excuse for a personal life_."

"_Emphasis on 'near.' Don't break out your tissues _yet_, dude; I'm gonna be around for a while. Gotta keep losers like you in line._"

"_How sweet. Warms my heart even in this time of _great _tribulation; it really does._"

"_Well, hey. What are best pals for?_"

* * *

The days go by like years, turned to decades, turned to centuries, turned instantly and irreversibly to seconds.

Artemis takes her suitcase back to her apartment. Jade gives her a sardonic good-bye and Roy makes her swear not to waste her bow now that he's buffed it up for her and Lian toys joyfully with her now shoulder-length hair with delight and exuberance.

She steps back into the peeling walls and the poor lighting and the locked-in heat, and she opens every window, but turns on none of the lamps. She's fairly certain that she doesn't sleep at all in the days leading up to the twentieth, and she only registers the most basic of information no matter how hard she endeavors to pay attention.

The plan is this: The original five of them – her, Dick, Conner, M'gann, and Kaldur – plus Barry, Bart, and Dr. Strange, will convene in the Arctic at exactly 1400 hours. They would travel in the bioship. Strange had sent in a transmission from the Arctic letting Kaldur and Barry know that the machine had been erected successfully, so now the only thing to do is to move out.

"I know that our presence is not necessary," Kaldur had told Strange, "but there is nothing of greater importance to any of us than being there for this... this moment."

"You're all completely welcome," Strange had replied, warm and confident. "I gotta say, when it comes to people witnessing my inventions work properly? The more, the merrier." Aside to himself, he had muttered, "That'll teach Serling Roquette to call me a nutjob."

Dick apparently gets Zatanna in on the news, which naturally prompts her into calling Artemis's cell phone upwards of a dozen times before Artemis finally can't take the sound anymore and answers.

"You didn't tell me!" Zatanna shouts, but not angrily. "I can't believe you didn't tell me this, Artemis; what's the _matter_ with you?! I _cannot_ believe I heard it from the Boy Wonder of Keeping Secrets from Everyone Who Should Know before I heard it from my best friend."

"Sorry," Artemis mumbles, terrified of saying anything of greater syllable count, lest she inadvertently give away her sore lack of enthusiasm.

"Yeah, you had _better_ be sorry, because you know what? Now I'm in Glasgow on official League business with Raquel and Doctor _Fake_ and we aren't going to be back in the States until the end of the _month_. And it's all your fault."

"My fault?" Artemis retorts indignantly. "I'm just sitting here, Zee!"

"Exactly!" Zatanna snips. "Ooh, it is _mind-boggling_ to me that you've been sitting on this info for _days_ and didn't even call me. Raquel's mad, too."

"I am!" Raquel shouts somewhere in the distance. "Tell her the only souvenir _she's_ getting from this trip is a swift kick to the head!"

"I'm sure you heard that," Zatanna says. Artemis can easily envision her waving her hand. "Anyway, your dog is back at my flat; the neighbor's taking care of him. I swear, the day you actually stick around long enough to keep that doofus fed is the day—"

There's the sudden sound of an explosion, and Zatanna lets out an annoyed huff. "Ugh, gotta run; agents of chaos to catch. _Tup meht ni a_—"

There's a click, and a dial tone, and Artemis is left staring at the phone in her hands, unable to feel amused.

Bart apparently bolts out of the hospital of his own volition the day before he's supposed to be officially released, which a still-stunned Barry only half-scolds him for. He shows up at Artemis's apartment the day before the departure to the Arctic and doesn't say a word to her, just speeds over to the couch, lies down on it, and falls asleep. Artemis supposes it's his roundabout way of telling her that he's refusing to let her spend her last night alone... _alone_, but she's secretly grateful that he doesn't have anything to say, because she's not sure she'd have anything to respond with.

Artemis's phone continues to ring – missed calls from her mother, from Mary, from Roy (who they'd wanted to enlighten, but whose connection to an agent of the League of Shadows hadn't exactly given him the best resumé), from Ollie, from Dinah, from _Batman_. She answers none of them, settling for watching the summer start before her eyes, deep blue skies and wobbling heat waves on the street and kids playing in the fire hydrants, the sunsets turning every cloud and cable line red. The heat is swelling so fast, as though the entire season will only have four days to start, but there's an unmistakable and constant wind that moves in currents down the avenues, and it always seems to sneak in through her windows and pay particular attention to her, tousling her hair.

June twentieth stretches out before her when the sun comes up on the fourth day. Bart is already gone, preferring to run there himself before the night had subsided. She's glad.

She puts on her Tigress costume, because anything but that leaves her skin crawling and uncomfortable, and trudges to the zeta tube. She types in the coordinates for Strange's new tube in the Arctic, unable to handle the thought of riding in the bioship with a group of people whose combined hope and happiness would cause her absence thereof to make her feel like a husk.

The zeta plane in between seems to rock her with motion and anticipation. There's heat in it, and speed, and resolve that shakes her bones.

The cold wind and the snow cut into her before she's even stepped out of it. She has to gulp back a wretched sound at the memories it ensnares her with, at the sight of the same mountains, the same barren tundra, the same cloudy sky, the same icy ruins of a cavern that had once housed an MFD, patiently hovering in the cold, waiting for someone to stop it.

Only Strange is there. She only starts to approach him after she takes a moment to handle the awe rendered to her by the sight of his machine.

It's taller than Kaldur and Conner combined, a more sleek and enormous version of a zeta tube, but it's only a sort of hoop. It's erected in what she thinks is the same place Wally's feet had pounded into a year ago, and she can see the Father Box, enlarged, attached to the peak of its silver surface. It's held against the ground by large bolts, no doubt drilled in by Bart, and it seems to hum with an imminent energy that leaves her feeling unbalanced. There's a wavering sheen of something in it, a strange bluish netting, like that of a dreamcatcher. It drifts from point to point with serenity.

Her boots crunch in the snow and alert Strange to her presence. He's wearing a thick red parka and a pair of snow boots and earmuffs, and his breath is clouding in front of him, and he's shivering, but he looks like he's having the time of his life.

"You're here early." He's grinning. "Rest of the Team's going to be pulling in..." He glances at his watch. "Oh, in maybe about twenty minutes. What do you think?"

He gestures grandly to the zetatron boom tube, his face illuminated with pride.

"It's, uh..." Artemis blinks. "Big."

"You bet." It's like she's just given him the highest compliment imaginable. "It's actually—"

Before he can finish, Bart suddenly zooms to a swift halt between them, kicking up a flurry of snow in his wake. He beams up at Artemis and throws his arms in the air.

"My favorite person in the world!" he exclaims. "Just got back from exploring the area, and you're not gonna believe what my expedition led me to – ice, ice, and more ice! And I even saw some _snow_!"

"He's been a little antsy," Strange explains with amusement.

"Heyheyhey, Doc, what do you expect?" Bart retorts. "I'm about to get my first cousin once-removed back; I'm not just gonna stand here and think about how fast the glaciers are moving! Well, gotta go; more to be seen!"

He's gone again before either of them can react.

Artemis hovers a bit awkwardly in silence as Strange goes to inspect the machine, checking things off on his clipboard, tapping buttons on the Father Box that make it chirrup, muttering to himself. Not soon enough, the bioship appears on the white horizon, approaching the site smoothly.

When it coasts to a stop and lowers, landing without a sound on the flat snow, Artemis's throat feels shockingly similar to sandpaper. She watches without moving as Kaldur, then Conner, then Dick and Barry disembark, followed by a soaring M'gann, whose cape flutters in the biting, frigid air.

They're all in their costumes, so she doesn't feel quite as absurd for wearing hers. Dick strides on ahead and stops beside her, along with Conner and M'gann, while Kaldur and Barry branch off toward Strange.

"I really have no idea how we're going to wait for two hours," M'gann murmurs, marveling up at the zetatron boom tube.

Conner snorts, stamping his feet anxiously.

"Well, it'd better start going by faster," he grunts, folding his arms. Artemis, though she doesn't say it, feels as though two hours is far too little time.

And it passes as such, too – all too soon, after a hazy, drifting lull of hearing Dick talk in her ear and feeling M'gann's mind slump against hers with impatience and bewilderment and watching Conner pace the ice in circles, watching Bart continuously zip over, zip away, zip over, zip away, before Barry finally grabs him by the arm and yanks him into stillness to explain the running process to him, Strange turns to the cluster of them shivering in the now-falling snow and announces, "We're ready."

M'gann lets out the tiniest of sobs, her fingers flying to shake at her spasming mouth. Conner seems to inhale deeply, tightly, and Dick gulps so that his Adam's apple bobs noticeably. Artemis gives no visible reaction.

Her mind swims through indistinct memories of freckled elbows, slightly uneven teeth, dirt-crusted fingernails and a chewed pencil and two sunburned shoulders under her palms, the smell of burned popcorn and pancake batter and grass. It all seems so out of place here, in this bitter wasteland of frost and clouds, but she doesn't.

Dick's hand is at her elbow, gently tugging her into stepping back with the rest of them. Artemis's heart is starting to drum without repent and her breaths are shallow and quick and her head feels light, but she's still moving, so that's something, at least.

M'gann's arm is around her. Conner's palm is gripping her shoulder. Kaldur's fingers are lingering at hers.

In front of her, seemingly so far away that they don't even look real, Barry and Bart align themselves behind the hoop, dig their heels into the snow, and look to Strange. He lifts his hand into the air and, after three seconds, brings it down in a swift swing.

Barry and Bart lock eyes for half a second, and then they just _go_.

Artemis only feels like she's half-seeing it. As they pick up speed, they begin to blur, and a wind starts to pick up in their wake, billowing out across the landscape. A funnel cloud gradually appears overhead, dark and thick, and Strange keeps his eyes focused on it all, unblinking.

Artemis's breath leaves her as she watches, despite her gulping efforts to keep it coming. The continuous gust dries and burns her eyes no matter how much she squints them, and it's sending her hair tearing around her face. Barry and Bart are accelerating, nothing more than red and gold streaks, and the tube is whirring and roaring and starting to glow at the center, and, as the seconds tick by, Artemis can see gold particles of light bursting out into the snow from somewhere beyond the tube.

She doesn't dare to blink. The ground is shaking beneath her, and there's lightning crackling down from the cloudy sky, sparking from the inside of the tube.

That's when she sees it.

Barry and Bart seem to pass, once more, in slow motion, and for a second, there is a body running between them, indistinct and made of bright light, of energy. Its arms are pumping and its legs are scrambling and with each lap Barry and Bart speed through, it becomes slightly more tangible, draws just another step farther away from the tube.

She has time to see three speedsters sprinting by all those yards in front of her before there's a sudden burst of sound, and a crackle from overhead, and some kind of sonic boom that deafens her and causes Conner to shout, clapping his hands over his ears. Everything in the air seems to rupture in a cathartic eruption of noise and force. Then the wind funnel surges out in all directions, released, and bowls into all of them, swiftly filling the visible air with a thick explosion of snow.

Then: silence.

It takes her a moment to realize that she'd put up her arm to shield herself, and that she's doubled over, bowed against the monsoon. She lowers it slowly, gasping for breath, and rises again, looking wildly around.

"Artemis!" Dick is bleating in a choked voice, somewhere far away. "Over here!"

Her head jerks to the right. Dick is beckoning her through the smoke toward a crater several yards away.

She's running before her mind even catches up to her. Her eyes throb and so do her fingers, and she pushes her way through the others, who are gathered in a bundle at the edge of the crater. Her own shallow breathing is the only thing her ears can pick up, and it's loud and grating but it doesn't stop.

She trips to a halt and, in a single instant, forgets how to move.

She stands, rigid, immobile, with eyes so wide that the cold air stings them. She can't even bring herself to shiver, no matter how much the harsh wind ravages her. It blows the smoke and loose snow and electricity apart.

The sight of Adam Strange clambering down into the crater plays in front of her like a damaged silent film, skipping and muffled and dim. The smoke ebbs slowly, pulled apart into tendrils, and that's when she catches a glimpse of golden yellow, though it is paled by the bleak light. Static fizzles in the taut air, and it paralyzes her lungs, her breath, her already feeble heartbeat.

The others mill around her, past her, in indistinguishable shapes and smears and stifled words. She doesn't move or breathe or blink and she tells herself that that's why her eyes are watering. Everyone else is running, scrambling, chaos and motion, but they're only silent blurs.

The last of the smoke blooms away, fading. It leaves behind a smoldering, circular rim around a black-skimmed depression in the ice, and the white air sharpens the images within it with clarity: a muscled body clad in gold, on all fours; a flash of red hair; a singed face; a pair of buckling arms; the sound of gulping breaths and heaving coughs; Adam Strange hovering beside it all, softly asking questions.

Dick stumbles into the scene, practically slides down the side of the crater, and falls forward onto his knees, grasping the padded yellow shoulders in each hand, croaking out words.

"Wally," he says, shivering, tearing his mask off and initiating an embrace clumsy and tight with emotion. "Kn—_Knew_ you'd be the last one here."

The name he'd spoken starts as a whisper in the air but then it erupts in Artemis's ears, making them drum incessantly. Her breathing quickens. Her palms go cold with sweat.

_Wally_ drops his forehead against Dick's and grips his hand. Dick clutches at it, hiccupping out sobs poorly disguised as chuckles.

They end up swaying slightly after Kaldur, his long legs carrying him in a half-sprint and half-leap down the wall of snow, impacts them both in his flung, ensnaring arms.

"My friend..." Kaldur chokes out, misty-eyed, beaming, clapping one yellow-suited shoulder. "My friend—"

Then, M'gann is on her knees behind Wally, stroking his hair, planting kisses all over his face through her round and dribbling tears and choked laughter. He's smiling goofily at the attention, at the way Conner leaps down into the pile and hugs him outright – practically scoops him up, grips him tightly as the others all laugh and cry and join in, until only the head crowned in fiery hair is visible from the tangle of arms and wet eyes. Adam Strange, softening, puts his hands up and steps back in surrender.

Artemis watches, still, as Barry comes barreling down the wall of snow. Everyone immediately parts, opening a path for him.

Wally stares at him a bit hesitantly, unsurely, but then Barry lets out a noise of emotion like none any of them have ever heard and strides forward, falls to his knees, flings his arms around Wally and pulls him close, a collision of an embrace, like a parent finding his wayward child. Wally grips him back, murmurs apologies that sound more like questions, and lets him hold him for as long as he likes.

And then comes Bart – small, wiry, unsure, hovering beside the uncle and nephew, looking more uncomfortable in his sunny yellow suit than ever before. Wally notices him in a few seconds and instantly reaches out an arm, pulls him in, and Bart, who has spent every day of his life in this new time hugging everyone he meets, ensnares Wally's waist in his arms with more ferocity than Artemis has ever seen, buries his face in Wally's chest, and practically burrows into the hug, as though afraid that if he doesn't, Wally will vanish again.

Wally ruffles his hair and pats his head, making some quip about a snack food Artemis had heard of once. Bart's crying, but grinning inexorably through it, and she can't tell his sobs from his laughter.

Barry lowers his arms, resting one hand on Wally's shoulder and one hand on Bart's, and beams through his bountiful tears.

"The Wall-man..." stutters out a shaking, but intact voice that yanks her insides out of her and knots them together, "is here! Now let's – get this party..."

Dick doesn't give it the chance to finish. An elbow collides with a rib and there's a yelp of indignation.

Then.

The red hair, the goggles, they shift. The whole body hums with energy at the motion, flickering just slightly in and out of tangibility as it stabilizes. It moves, slowly, hazily, and then its eyes, alive and ablaze with green, lock into hers.

Artemis can't breathe. There's a part of her that's trying, but everything inside of her is strained and stiff and the very thought of living seems like a distant priority now, in this state of petrified confusion. She hasn't seen those eyes in a year.

Everyone turns. Wally seems to recognize the difference in Artemis's face, in the way she's holding herself, and it makes his eyes swiftly dim with staggering confusion.

As his smile ebbs away, Wally stares up at her, panting, quaking, and doesn't look away.

Artemis breathes in, breathes out. Some snow catches in her eyelashes. A single shudder races down her spine.

She does the only thing she can think of doing, now that she's seeing those green eyes again, hearing the beat of that breathing again, seeing that face, the one mirrored so disgustingly well on a cold blue hologram.

She takes a step back, and then another.

And then she runs away.


	12. Chapter 12

**This might be the shortest of all the updates so far? I actually posted the _full_ full update on tumblr (it was 9,700 words), but I thought it might be better to break it up on here so it wouldn't be so bulky and overwhelming.**

**I am so floored by the positive reception to the last chapter; holy cow. And the fact that so many people took the time to drop a line telling me what they thought? Really amazing and thoughtful. THIS THING HIT 200 REVIEWS TODAY; I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. I kinda cried; it was pretty pathetic.**

**I hope these last few chapters won't disappoint. (And since a couple of people asked last time, there are about three or four left; I haven't decided.)**

* * *

She winds up at Jade's apartment, mashing her thumb repeatedly against the buzzer. She's shaking and sort of hyperventilating and she feels light-headed, but she's relentless, barely able to stand still long enough to let Jade answer.

"Artemis?" Jade's voice crackles over. "What the—?"

"Let me _in_!" Artemis yells, sounding desperate and nearly hysterical.

She hears the door unlock immediately and she flings it open, running up the stairs and pounding on Jade's apartment door. It opens within seconds, and she gets a glimpse of Jade's uncharacteristically astonished face for a moment before it blurs into everything else as she pushes her way inside, wringing her hands, trying to will her head to stop pounding. She paces without aim.

"Artemis?" Jade prompts her calmly. "What is it?"

When Artemis doesn't reply right away, she continues, "If you're here because you're a fugitive, I'd just like to point out that I—"

"He's back," Artemis croaks, halting in the middle of the room with clenched fists and blanched knuckles. "We… it worked, Jade. We got him."

She turns to face Jade with wide eyes, shivering in terror and adrenaline.

"Wally's home," she finishes in a rasp.

Jade blinks at her.

There's a long pause.

"Sis," she finally drawls, staring at Artemis skeptically, "I'm not sure you're responding to this information correctly. Think on what you just said, in case you didn't actually hear it. This stupid crusade of yours is over because you've got your marginally _stupider_ boyfriend back; _why_ aren't you hanging off of him like an extra limb, exactly?"

"Because I don't know _how_!" Artemis shouts. "Jade, I've been looking for him for so long that I think I forgot how to have him _here_. I… I feel like I lost _me_ to find _him_ and now I…"

She covers her mouth with one hand, breathing unevenly into it before slowly running it back over to her face to rest at her scalp.

"I don't know if… if I can go back to how we were," she says in a disbelieving whimper. "I… I _coped_, Jade. I coped and I didn't even notice. I don't know who he is anymore. I don't know who _I_ am – _look_ at me!"

She throws her arms out as if stripping herself bare and stands there, still out of breath, with unkempt hair and a confusion in her eyes that seems to come from a girl far younger. Jade examines her carefully, her arms folded, for several moments.

Then she steps forward, slowly.

Artemis doesn't know why, but she starts to cry. There isn't a critical moment of decision-making, of whether to hold it back or let it out; it just _starts_, and suddenly she can't stop it. It's messy and unashamed and she feels like a little girl again, curled up in the corner and covering her ears so she wouldn't have to hear her parents shouting at each other long into the night.

"Shh," Jade immediately hushes her, scooping her into a loose hug. Artemis collapses against her, all pretense of sisterly abrasiveness gone. Jade reaches up with one hand to stroke her hair. "You're fine. It's fine."

"It's _not_," Artemis whispers, slumping. "I saw him and I just – I panicked. I ran. I don't know what—I just know I can't see him. Not now. Not yet; maybe not _ever_."

"Oh, stop it. Go get some sleep," Jade tells her in lieu of counsel, drawing away and bracing Artemis's slackened shoulders with her hands. "You can stay here as long as you like, provided you're still housetrained. I won't tell anyone."

Artemis's lower lip quivers against her will and, to hide any further tears, she flings her arms around Jade again. Jade groans, but Artemis can tell, on some level, that it's for show.

"Chesh?" Roy's groggy voice drifts in from the bedroom. "Wassgoin' on?"

"Nothing, dear," Jade croons back, detaching from Artemis to get the blanket for the couch. "Just my kid sister, running away from her problems." She turns to Artemis and tosses her a blanket. "I hope you'll be contributing to grocery funds."

Artemis catches the blanket and bites her lip, looking down at it with still-damp eyes.

"I'm so _scared_, Jade," she rasps.

"That's a good sign," Jade says. She moves to turn off the lamp on the coffee table. "After all. Being scared is what brought Alice home."

For the first time in days, Artemis closes her eyes and falls into a thick and dreamless sleep.

—

Wally wakes up to the scent of bacon.

He blinks his eyes open with grogginess and confusion, because the last thing he remembers is running, and snow, and wondering if Artemis is going to be happy that she finally gets to stretch onto the left side of the bed. A short bump of pain shoots from one temple to the other at his consciousness and he groans, rolling over and instinctively pulling the sheets under which he's curled over his head.

It's dark, and he's in a bed. The pillowcase smells so familiar that it makes his stomach jerk, though not painfully. As he comes to more fully, he can hear a small clock ticking somewhere close to him, and a lot of birds outside, and the sound of sizzling and running water and a whirring mixer. The bed is just slightly too short for him, and his toes keep slipping over the edge.

He shifts back infinitesimally, his fingers curling over the hem of the comforter and tugging it down to his nose.

He frowns blearily at the ceiling overhead and mumbles nonsense, pushing himself up into a sitting position with his palms flat on the mattress. The comforter puddles in his lap.

He glances down at himself, lips pursed. He's wearing a worn-out t-shirt with Einstein's face on it and a pair of red plaid pajama pants, and his left hand is bandaged. He tries to clench it into a fist, but it throbs sorely in retaliation, making him immediately release it and hiss through his teeth.

His eyes drift up and he gives a slight start. The room he's in is nothing but dark and empty walls, a barren desk with a slightly dusty swivel chair, a bedside table with only an alarm clock and a glass of water on it.

That's not what unsettles him, though. There is practically a kingdom of cardboard boxes stacked up in a labyrinthine arrangement around him, each of them labeled, in shaky black handwritten letters, with his name.

His mind catches up to him, then, and in an instant, he tears the covers off of him and zooms out into a hallway he knows like the lines on his palms. He's mostly able to ignore the surge of wooziness behind his eyes at the sorry lack of fuel he has for this sudden burst of energy, but still manages to crash into the wall.

He grits his teeth and forces himself to stand up steadily, but still sort of stumbles down the rest of the hallway before coming to a lurching, speechless stop at the doorway to the kitchen.

His mother is there. She doesn't seem to have noticed him. Ordinarily, he would zip in and try to procure a sample of whatever she's cooking, or announce his presence with some terrible pun, but there's something in her behavior that stuns and petrifies him into utter silence.

She's bustling around at her usual speed, but there's something off about it – it's not natural, but desperate and anxious and tincture of terrified. Her hands are shaking and everything she touches wobbles in her fingers; she's murmuring to herself and her eyes are wet and she looks like she hasn't slept in days. Her cardigan is a color he's never seen in her wardrobe in the twenty years since he's been born: gray.

She hovers over the bacon cooking on the stove and tucks some hair behind her ear, her fingers quaking as she does so. She gingerly picks up an egg from the counter, no doubt to fry it, but it's still tottery in her fingers.

"Mom?" Wally finally murmurs, with concern and astonishment.

The egg falls and smashes to the floor.

Mary jumps, her hands jerking to her mouth and clapping closed over it, but she doesn't turn around. He knows that she had heard him – her disconcertingly frozen posture is likely an indicator of that – but she's shivering and unbudging. Her palms muffle the gut-wrenching string of sorrowful, breathless noises that she's suddenly making. Wally's eyebrows go up in shock when two tears slip swiftly down over her fingers.

"Mom," he tries again, unable to mask his concern. He enters the kitchen, his bare feet sliding across the tile. "D'you… need me to set the table, or anything?"

She seems so much smaller, as though she's perpetually doubled over with a tired-out sob that makes no sound. Her skin is a little more ashen and her hands look a little more wizened and her eyes are red at the edges when they finally meet his – when they do, she lets out a quiet whimper and closes her eyes tightly, like the sight of him is breaking her to pieces.

Not knowing what else to do, he moves toward her and pulls her into a hug.

"Hey, Mom; it's just me," he murmurs. "What's the—"

She's crying, loudly, unabashedly, and that, honestly, makes _him_ want to cry, the same way it always has. Her fingers are bunched in his t-shirt and her face is buried against his chest and her shoulders are shaking, and she's weeping without restraint, but also without sorrow.

"Wally," she's sobbing out, and when her hands release the fabric, she cuffs him in an embrace that knocks the breath out of him. "Wally, Wally, Wally…"

She doesn't stop saying his name, and it grows louder and more garbled with every mention, but eventually, the bawling turns to tearful, unrepentant laughter. That's when Wally spots movement out of the corner of his eye, and looks up just in time to see his father come in.

He and Rudy stare at each other with what have to be very similar shocked expressions for a time that, to Wally, seems so long that it stretches him, but eventually Rudy's eyes start to glisten and well up and he strides forward in two steps, throwing his arms around Wally's shoulders, taking care not to knock into Mary.

Wally has only ever seen his parents cry once, and it had been when he'd graduated from high school. He's only ever been hugged by them this way once, as well, when he'd sped back into a house a part of him had feared would be empty, with a cast on his arm and dirt still in his hair and cat scratches on his cheeks; but there hadn't been tears, then, just them running to each other, colliding in the middle of the living room in a small embrace that seemed to him, then, to take up the whole block, and he had never felt safer or more wanted in his whole life.

When Mary finally releases him, she beams up at him through her damp cheeks and frames his face with her cool hands. He grins down at her, cheekily, and tries to ignore the sudden, unexpected shock of how much taller he's gotten since his sixteenth birthday, when his head had barely reached her neck. Now it doesn't quite seem like she's embracing _him_ anymore – it feels like it's the other way around.

"Jeez, Mom; you'd think I'd just aced a Chem test," he jokes, which only makes her lower lip wobble more.

Rudy's scoff poorly disguises the emotional sob he's been holding in. Mary's palms go to Wally's temples, and to smooth down his hair, before finally lingering at his shoulders. She sniffles loudly, and two more tears spring out to join the others, curving around her upturned lips in wet lines.

"Look, not that I'm trying to sound ungrateful, or anything, because, hey, home-cooked Mom breakfast, but…" He scratches the back of his head. "What am I doing back at home, exactly?"

Mary and Rudy exchange unreadable looks, their faces gradually sombering. Wally can't explain the uneasy feeling in his stomach, and that doesn't exactly do wonders for his comfort.

"Sweetheart," Mary finally says in a voice sounding significantly older and heavier than he remembers. "This is probably going to be a lot to take in, but…"

"Actually, Wally…" Rudy continues for her when she has to gulp down an emotion that makes Wally's insides go cold even though he can't quite identify it. "I think maybe you ought to sit down."

That is, arguably, the precise moment that Wally realizes, with a swiftly sinking heart, that something is incredibly, irreparably wrong.

* * *

He thumps his foot incessantly on the floor for what feels like a few seconds short of eternity, evaluating the new cell phone in his hand with furrowed eyebrows. He has to roll his eyes at least six times before he finally hits the "dial" button.

It rings three times, each one of them making him increasingly tense. Finally, there's a click, and he straightens up.

"Nguyen residence," a voice drawls.

"Hi, Jade," he greets, and then grimaces – too familiar. "Uh, I mean, _Cheshire_. This is… Wally."

There's a pause.

"I'm sorry; I don't know anyone by that name."

He scowls.

"Kid Flash?" he tries again, and she hums negatively. "Your sister's _boyfriend_?"

When he receives no response, he grits his teeth and slumps.

"The Ginger Disaster?" he grinds out.

"Oh, right, _you_," Jade replies. "That's right. You're alive now. Well, congrats on your survival, Freckles. I'm sure the world is just bursting with jubilation. How's your hand? I heard it got a little banged-up on the landing."

"Is Artemis there?" he asks shortly, ignoring her question.

"Now why would _Artemis_ be with _me_ when she could be with _you_?" Jade coos. "After all, she was _so_excited after you came prancing on back through that tube thing—"

"A-ha!" he exclaims, pointing at nothing. "She _is_ there, isn't she."

"Maybe she is; maybe she isn't." Jade's voice remains serene. "But if she _was_, then I can safely say that anyone stupid enough to try crowding in here and bothering her would come out of the experience with significantly fewer limbs. You feel me, Flash Boy?"

Wally gulps against his will, the nickname that had once incensed him going straight over his head.

"Look, I just want to talk to her," he says in a tone frighteningly close to a whine. "Please. It took me_forever_ to find this number and I just… I don't know. Hearing her voice would be – nice."

"Aw, precious." Jade's sneer shines through the speaker. "If you were here right now, I'd be pinching your little cheeks. But the fact is, she's not ready to see you yet. Give her some space. She _might_ come around."

When he doesn't respond, she huffs.

"I'm sure she'll _want_ to," she adds. "Eventually. So just be patient. I know how hard it must be for you and your obnoxious speedster processing pace, but I'm sure you'll pull through."

Wally blinks in astonishment.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Jade snorts. "Cherish it, because I'm tempted to make it a one-time offer. Frankly, Wallace, seeing you right now would probably give her a heart attack, and I'd _really_ prefer my baby sister live long enough for at least sixty more babysitting sessions."

"Okay… fine," Wally mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Just tell me; is she – is she okay?"

There's a short silence. Wally is slightly concerned that Jade isn't responding with derisive laughter or an off-the-cuff retort.

"Hardly," she replies at last in a falsely airy voice. "But what do you expect? I mean, _really_. I've known ever since I decided not to kill you for the first time that you're stupid, kid, but if you really think she's going to be fine, then you've knocked _all_ of my expectations out of the park."

"Excuse _me_ for wanting to talk to my girlfriend after I've apparently been dead for a year," he snaps without being able to stop himself. "Excuse _me_ for asking how she's _doing_. I get that you don't like me; okay? I don't care. Just take…" He runs his fingers through his hair and flops back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. "Just… take good care of her."

Jade hums unreadably.

"See, that's your problem," she says. "I like you just fine, Flash Boy. Why do you think you've lasted this long?"

Wally opens his mouth, bewildered, to reply, but she continues talking over him.

"But okay." She sighs briskly. "Consider it done. As long as you do not call me _ever_ again. The only time I want to see your face is when my sai is a few inches away from it, and the only time I want to hear your voice is when it's begging me for your life. Got it?"

"Whatever," he grumbles, but then, "Thanks."

"I'm not doing it for you," she replies simply. "Welcome back to the world of the living, buddy boy. I wish you the best of luck."

She mocks blowing a kiss, and hangs up.

* * *

"You broke into my apartment so you could steal _your_ dog back," Zatanna deadpans into the phone. "I should have you arrested."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't," Artemis grunts back as she shoulders open the door to her apartment. She releases Brucely's leash and he goes flailing inside with a thrilled loll of his tongue and a whuff of joy.

She glances around the apartment, putting her free hand into her pocket and closing the door behind her. Somehow, facing down its dreariness (excluding Bart's little string of lights over the couch) quells the churning in her stomach.

"So you're back at your place now?" Zatanna asks her a bit testily. "Are you, like, officially coming out of hiding, or what?"

"Yeah," Artemis mutters, slumping against the wall. "Jade didn't… kick me out, exactly, but she said that six days was enough cowering time and I needed to get over myself."

"Does he know where you live?" Zatanna's voice is soft.

Artemis grimaces. "Let's hope not."

"I don't get it," Zatanna murmurs. "This is what you've been wanting for _months_, Artemis. This is, like… this is the happiest ending you could get. He's not even dead. He's literally been chilling out at his parents' house for _days_. I just saw him yesterday, and he…"

Her voice hitches. "He looks… fine."

"Yeah, well, kinda hard to make room for somebody who you've spent the last year of your life getting used to not seeing or hearing or talking about," Artemis snaps. "I gotta go, Zee."

"Artemis—" Zatanna starts to say, but Artemis hangs up.

She nudges her suitcase more fully into the room with her foot. One of Gotham's famous summer rainstorms is hurtling down outside, its thick, warm droplets thundering against her windows. Brucely shakes the water out of his fur and trots into the kitchen, no doubt to try to find his food dish.

Artemis runs a hand over her face. It feels like she's rubbing herself raw. Some thunder growls in the distance and the rain seems to respond by coming down harder.

Her fingers halt at her shoulder and she realizes that she's hugging herself. With a sigh, she lets her arms drop and moves to pick up her suitcase and carry it into the bedroom.

Before she can, however, there's a knock at the door.

She freezes, one hand poised stiffly over the handle of the suitcase, and stares out the window at the rain. She knows that there's no possible way she could guess who's on the other side of the door, but something in her ribs and in her lungs and in her throat works its way into a name that makes her knees feel like they're about to give out.

She stands perfectly still, in the deluded hopes that he'll assume he has the wrong apartment and move on. But knuckles tap against the wood again, knowingly, and she has to gulp down the lump rising at the back of her mouth.

"Coming," she hears herself say, slowly straightening up.

The doorknob feels freezing in her hand when she grasps it and turns it. With movement that she's entirely sure is not her own, she tugs the door open, stepping slightly back, and looks up.

Her heart bolts down to her knees.

Wally is standing in the hallway, holding something in one hand, utterly sopping. His hair dribbles water onto his nose and his sweatshirt clings to him uncomfortably, and his skin doesn't seem to have much color. He's breathing a bit heavily, as though winded.

"Hi," he says.


	13. Chapter 13

**Okay, sue me if this is a little on the overly uplifting side toward the end, but for real; we've been through 12 chapters of soul-crushing sadness; I figured I owed you guys (and myself) this much. Plus, I just went like 66,000 words without having my OTP interact with each other; that really takes it out of a girl, y'know? **

**Enjoy!**

* * *

"Hi," he says.

She doesn't say anything. Her knuckles go white as she clenches the doorknob in her hand. Lightning flashes outside and for a second, he looks younger, skinnier, more freckled, warmer in the corners, proudly presenting her with a bouquet of wind-withered flowers and grinning bashfully, but it passes.

"Been a while," he says breathlessly, and only then does she realize that he's shaking. "Or… I mean, that's what I've… heard."

"What do you want?" she murmurs. The words sting her throat like bile.

He looks momentarily startled at the fact that she'd responded.

"I, uh…" He swallows, shakes his head loosely, and extends the object in his hands toward her. "I went back to the Palo Alto place and… they gave me this. The people living there now, I mean."

Artemis glances down.

It's the picture she'd left on the sidewalk, all those months ago.

She can't bring herself to look away from it. She'd taken it with a disposable camera the day after his high school graduation, during the Team's party for the both of them. He's wearing his standard button-down red shirt over a white cotton tee, and a pair of black Ray Bans (his present from Iris) are perched on his head, offset in the sunlight by the wind-tangled mass of red. He's looking away from the camera, in profile, out at the ocean, with a grin scrunched on his face, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand (and what an idiot; he had a pair of sunglasses right there). He hadn't even known that she'd taken it until the roll of film had been developed.

"Ah," she hears herself say neutrally. The glass of the frame is cracked from where it had hit the concrete, right over his freckles.

"I really ought to be offended," he says jokingly (but there's a desperation to it). "I mean, look at this guy. He's way too good-looking not to be on your bedside table or in your wallet or something. Don't you have any taste?"

Artemis just stares at him, still grasping the doorknob in one hand. He smiles crookedly and questioningly at her, but her expression remains neutral.

"Whoa, hold the phone. You… you _remember_ me, right?" He claps a hand to his forehead and groans. "Oh _jeez_. You have amnesia. Of course! That makes way more sense."

He leans against the door frame, giving her his best winning smile, and it does nothing to her.

"Well, beautiful, let's start with names. I'm Wally. Also known as the Wall-man, sometimes The Late Kid Flash. I just got back from this really weird alternate dimension thing and I'd like to talk to my total babe of a girlfriend – footnote: that's you – so I can make it up to her, since she's probably _totally_ wigged and ready to kill me. With me so far?"

"Don't be an idiot; I know who you are," she says flatly.

The way his eyes immediately brighten should be enough to soften her heart right then and there, but it doesn't.

"Oh, man, I have so missed hearing you call me an idiot, babe." He moves forward with lifted arms as if to hug her, but she steps back sharply, practically flinching.

His face falls instantly.

"Artemis?" he asks her seriously. "What's… what's wrong?"

"Look," she says as evenly as she can, but it still comes out brusque. "I'm not ready to see you right now, okay? Please just go away."

She has to bite down on her tongue in self-punishment at the sight of the look on his face. It's like she's just physically broken him in half and his expression is all he has to show for it.

"I don't…" His voice is quiet and wavering. "I don't understand."

"Think about it!" she snaps, keeping her voice loud and harsh to try to dispel the sucker-punching sadness in his. "You're a smart guy; you'll figure it out."

"You're gonna have to give me a hint!" he retorts. "Listen – I _tried_ to ask Dick what you've been doing since I, uh, _went_. Okay? I tried. But he wouldn't tell me; he just gave me your address and now I'm here and all I have this this lousy picture because apparently my bank account was frozen so now I can't even buy you apology flowers. What's up with that?"

When she doesn't respond, when her eyes shoot away, he moves his face into her line of vision and forces her to look at him again.

"Look, please just – please just try to understand, okay?" he implores her. His eyebrows are sorrowfully pinched together. "I come back from what feels like the quickest but somehow _longest_ run I can remember to find out that my life is basically gone. There's a hologram of me in the Watchtower, Artemis! My parents packed all of my stuff into boxes! My cell phone's been deactivated, my old apartment has new people living in it, Bart's rockin' the yellow and red, my mom hasn't stopped crying for, like, six days, I'm a year behind at school, I can't go to the Watchtower without at least one person breaking down in front of me, Barry's barely letting me out of his sight, and now my girlfriend doesn't even wanna look at me. Lotta stuff to happen in two steps!" His face darkens. "This isn't easy for me, either, you know."

"Oh yeah?" she barks back, her eyes starting, against her will, to water. "Well, how about this, then: I _told _your _parents_ that you were _dead_. I went to your funeral. I watched them put up that hologram and I stood in front of it every day for _weeks_. Those boxes your stuff's in? Half of them _I_ had to pack when I moved everything you owned out of our old place; I had to put _all of it_ away in a bunch of boxes that I didn't have the guts to open so I left them on your parents' porch! I got sympathy cards, and condolences, and apologies. I cut my hair; I put on the Tigress suit again because I didn't want Artemis running around without a partner. I hugged your stupid cousin every time he broke down in front of me, and he returned the favor. I watched your stupid best friend disappear and lose his mind looking for you. I watched M'gann burn six cakes before she finally got one good enough for the memorial. I watched Conner sleep in closets and I watched your mom fall apart and when I heard your stupid voice in that _stupid_ zeta tube I forgot how to even _function_; and now this is what I am, okay? And you think you can just give me a_picture_ and it's all going to be fine?! You—"

"Can I come in?" he asks suddenly. His eyes seem much more pale when they rivet themselves into hers. His fists, at his sides, are blanched at the knuckles.

She doesn't know why she lets him. She bows her head after a long moment of silence before stepping aside, holding the door open for him. He steps forward tentatively, and she forces her eyes to stick on the floor when he passes her, the fabric of his hoodie brushing against her, dampening her shirt.

He looks slowly around the apartment, looking more and more wounded with every inch. Artemis closes the door quietly, watching the water drip from his hair onto the floor.

"You live here?" he finally asks, his voice hushed with disbelief.

Artemis stays focused on a particularly interesting burl in the hardwood, eyebrows tight.

"Yeah," she whispers.

"Alone?" He sounds on the verge of tears, which makes her throat feel swollen.

She shrugs a bit jerkily. "I've got Brucely."

Wally's shoulders visibly loosen.

"He's okay?"

"He misses you," she replies, and, against her will entirely, a tremor runs through her voice.

Wally turns to face her. (Wally, magnificent Wally, terrible Wally, paralyzing Wally, in all his being and electrified presence; warmth, skin, green eyes, buzzing air, veins, elbows, neck, Adam's apple, broad shoulders; Wally whose faded freckles are dark in the light, whose stare pulls her apart and frays her; Wally whose side of the bed has been cold; Wally who tastes like summer and wind and smoke and life; Wally, who is _gone_.)

"Artemis," he whimpers, long and desperate and heavy with pain, as though saying it is the most excruciating thing he's ever done. "What happened?"

She swallows back tears as she looks him in the eye, her whole frame shaking and shivering just at the sound of her name in his throat, nothing like the pale fragment of a frightened echo that had, a year ago, driven and dangled her over the brink of madness. The contact of gazes is making her stomach jerk queasily every time he blinks, but she doesn't look away, though the substance of her sears her with a feeling she doesn't ever want to face.

"You died," she replies in a murmur, drawing further away from him and darting her eyes swiftly downwards. "This is what happens to me when you die."

He makes a noise like he's choking on something. Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she can see him running a hand over his face, wiping clumsily at his nose. She bites her cheek, hard.

"Mom and Dad, uh… they… told me I've been—" He gulps, brushing at his leaking eyes. "It's been a year."

Artemis nods slowly. "And six days."

"You counted," he chokes out. "So you—"

He shifts slightly, a few feet closer, though there's still a gaping room between them. "Dick said you… heard me in the zeta tube. And then Fate… you went to Fate." Another step. She doesn't back away. "They all said you – you didn't stop looking for me."

"Idiot; of course I didn't!" she suddenly yells, her voice breaking, and when Wally flinches, she forces herself to spasm into quiet. "Why would—why _would_ I, if I knew you were alive? If I even _thought_ it? You stupid…"

"But you found me," he rasps, throwing his arms limply up for a moment and looking at her with confusion and sadness and utter lostness. "Babe—" Her heart capsizes. "I'm _here_. I'm right here. Right in front of you. I'm home."

_Are you?_ a voice in her head whispers back, but instead she monotonously says, "I know."

"Then why are you acting like this?" he demands, sounding, for all his knee-jerk anger, like a wounded animal. "If you've spent a year trying to bring me back, then why are you running away as soon as you do?"

"Because I—!" Her feelings overwhelm her in a frigid tidal wave and her voice abruptly snaps off. She drags it back again. "Because… that's not who I am anymore."

"What do you mean?" he asks, the heat in his voice immediately starting to ebb.

Artemis turns away from him, scrubs her hands over her face and stops them in her hair in fists.

"Artemis had to get thrown out, okay? Artemis would've moved on even though she didn't want to. I couldn't – I had to do things, to find out how to bring you back… things that Artemis wouldn't do."

She finally pivots just slightly back, though she's still angled away from him. She catches his eye emptily over her shoulder, her hands dropping to her sides.

"I had to be Tigress," she whispers.

Wally's face is helplessly bewildered, his eyebrows twitching together with a fiercer equivalent of sadness.

"What?" he croaks.

"Artemis was… Wally's partner," she whispers, echoing words she'd spoken to Bart, words that had been the only genuine and honest thing she'd said to him that day. "Tigress was his hunter. It was one or the other."

"Artemis—"

"So what if I threw myself away to bring you back?" she cuts him off in a bark, frenzied with emotion. "I thought it was a fair trade, so I made the choice!"

He combs his hands through his hair, starting to breathe more heavily.

"So – so you basically put yourself on hold for – for me."

"No," she snaps back. "No, not for you. For me. I knew what I wanted and I knew what I had to give up to get it and I didn't care what it was. And you…" She swallows thickly. "You were worth it. That hasn't changed. But I have." Her shoulders loosen, and her voice plunges into fractured sadness. It feels so strange, so off-putting, to address him by his name, and not just speak it in memoriam. "I've _changed_, Wally."

(_"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then," Alice said._)

"No, you haven't!" he unexpectedly shouts, his eyes glistening. "You _haven't._ You're still stubborn, and beautiful, and complex, and strong and perfect and_good_. You're the same as you were when I left; you don't need me to tell you that. You came back from the mission and hung Tigress up for another day; can't you just… can't you just do it again?"

She doesn't answer. She can't. She wants to tell him that it's not that easy; it's not as _easy_ as stepping into another dimension and back out of it again and not having aged a day. She only shakes her head and he grimaces, wrenching his eyes shut.

"We can fix whatever happened while I was gone; we can fix all of it," he insists, a little desperately, opening his eyes again to gaze over at her – and Artemis realizes how much she's missed this, this fumbling optimism. "I'm not stupid; I know it's not… just gonna be a switch we can flick, but – _Artemis_, I don't care what happened to me. I don't. I just want to fix what happened to everybody else. I want to _fix_things."

_Symbiosi. Together._

His feet move slowly across the floor, and finally they're only a short distance apart, so much that she can feel the energy in the air around him. She turns fully to face him again, her hands shaking, wringing together at her stomach.

"You never… said what happened to you," she mumbles, unexpectedly even to herself. "When you – you know."

He reaches up and scratches the back of his head, shrugging jerkily.

"I guess it… it didn't really feel like anything," he tells her. "It was like I did a year's worth of running in one second, like—like I took two steps through this – this _nowhere_, this big fast ball of nowhere, and then…" He looks down, at her hands, achingly. "Then I was home. I guess I kinda passed out after you guys brought me back. I woke up at my parents' place."

"I watched," she hears herself say in a hoarse voice, barely audible. "I didn't… actually see it; you were going so fast, but I… I heard you." Her voice hits a bump and then turns into a whimper. "I heard you screaming."

He drops his head, finally, his eyes darkening as they lock onto the floor. Artemis is torn between wanting to sprint away from him and wanting to strip him naked and touch him.

"It was…" He blinks, hard. "It hurt."

"I know," she whispers, even though she doesn't – couldn't possibly know. What she does know, however, is the way his shouts had torn through the arctic air like claws, twisting their virulent echoes into her every inch. Her fingers curl for want of tangling into his. "Barry told me that you – that just before you went… you wanted him to tell me you loved me." Her face twists with anger she hasn't trawled up in months, and her voice with it. "That was all I _got_, Wally."

"Well, he got it wrong," Wally murmurs after a time, running his hands slowly over his eyes. "I wanted… I wanted him to tell you I was sorry."

Somehow, that's what does it.

Something inside of her splinters and then snaps, a furious burst of release and fury, and she shrieks out something like a battle cry and lunges at him and starts to pound her bruised fists, both at once, against his chest.

It's nothing like hitting Conner. Wally staggers, and his heart quickens, and despite his stammer of surprise, it only takes him seconds to catch her arms in his hands. She screams her tears out and writhes.

She's not channeling any kind of brutality or force, but there are wet trails on her cheeks and she's screaming, over and over, that she hates him, hates what she's become, hates the bloodied hole he'd made of her life, and now he has the nerve to come back? She hates him, she hates him, but truly she hates the dark and broken year she's had to live without him.

And he just takes it. And he _holds_ her. She knows again what it is to be held by him, gripped and engulfed and understood, accepted, brought home. She knows the warmth of the crooks of his elbows at her shoulders, and of his chest, even through the damp fabric clinging to it. Her fists finally slacken and slow and she curls against him, falls into him, and he presses his cheek to her temple and cradles her, the way he has a hundred times before, and she sobs.

The sound is swollen with grief and fury and, above them all, unrepentant joy – and it's messy, and wretched, every piece of it _torn_ out of her, but Wally only clutches her more tightly and murmurs promises into her hair, that he's here, he's home, he knows she's still in there and she can take as long as she likes to figure that out herself, because he'll wait.

She quiets, drawing away, the sound of her own heart throbbing against her spine.

"Well, hey; you waited for me," he whispers, and slowly, he brushes his knuckles against her cheek, drags them barely down to her jaw (for a moment, a bony and unwelcome moment, they're in a musky warehouse, thick coats and gloves and queasy stomachs, and the biggest thing they're scared of is whether _she'll_ come back). "Seems fair for me to take over your shift, right?"

"Idiot," she croaks, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, her voice high and cracking.

"Yours truly," he replies, and his smile shakes, but does not fall.

His face is closer to hers than she can bear, every freckle its own sun, heating the skin on her cheeks. She doesn't have to look at his lips to know that they're rough and wind-chapped and warm, molded to fit between and over hers. His body, tall and broad-chested and whole, thrums with energy, uncertainty, and shivers microscopically with fear. She could lean forward by maybe an inch and touch him.

"I can't believe—" she whispers in a voice unstable with disbelief. She shakes her head when it trails off. "_Wally_."

"Hey," he murmurs back in greeting, with softness, in the same way he had before he'd gone, when they'd both sleep in until noon and she'd kiss him awake, and he'd smile sleepily up at her like he was genuinely happy to see her (a sentiment she was unused to receiving). He lifts his hand and his fingers just barely ghost past the top of her ear, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind it.

Something, some tectonic plate deep in her chest, shifts and rumbles and the scared part of her mind, the logical one, blacks out.

She's the one who slams the kiss onto him, with every ounce of force in her body, immediately flinging her arms around his neck and yanking him closer, her teeth thudding into his. He responds, as always, in an instant, presses his hands to her shoulder blades and crushes her against him, lifts her up, breathes unevenly against her tongue as she slips it messily out to nudge his.

Their mouths are tangled with heat and wetness and something that can only be described as friction, and Artemis's whole body is taut with need and desperation and a deep, bone-gripping hunger. Warmth drums a frenetic pulse between her legs and every one of her muscles is wired for action, combat, victory, fulfillment, _him_.

Though she's assaulting him with want that borders on urgency and aimlessness, his hands move over her slowly, fingers skimming with agonizing indolence and care across her bare arms, down her spine, and then they linger at the hem of her shirt, unsure, and she breaks off long enough to swiftly pull the fabric off, flinging it aside.

She makes fast work of his hoodie and the t-shirt under it, shedding them from him until she can meet his skin with hers, and she likes to imagine that there are still sparks coursing through him, little shocks under her fingernails and in her blood, awakening the air at the edges of his body.

"Artemis…" he starts to whisper, glassy-eyed, gazing at her with blown-out pupils and staggering concentration, but she silences him with another kiss, messy and dirty, her hands rising to cradle his head, comb through his hair, breathe him in with her very skin.

"Shhh," she hushes him when she pulls away, and then she reaches behind herself and slips her bra open. It sags loosely at the swell of her breasts and Wally glances at her, his bright eyes asking for permission, and she nods, and he gingerly pinches each strap between two fingers and slides it carefully off of her.

She hasn't been touched in a year. She hasn't tasted. She hasn't moved, gasped, murmured, felt; she hasn't known the warmth of a mouth melding to hers, or the feeling of fingernails and teeth on her skin, or the beat of another heart, fluttering out love letters to hers. There's a part of her that's on the brink of crying, though she doesn't know why. Mostly she's drowning in the overdriven need for Wally, for everything she's been missing, for every little sound he'll make that will remind her that he's alive.

He breathes in and out slowly through his mouth, a whisper of life, pure summer heat on her neck and earlobes, and his other hand goes to her hair, strokes it, revels in each chopped-off strand as though it's as boundless and golden as the thick ponytail that had bewitched him as a teenager.

The sound of his breath against her ear, the sensation of his humming skin grazing her stomach and breasts and jeans, the splatter of freckles that she can see and count and find galaxies in, they all course into her, once, in a single throb of certainty, so that she finds the nerve to whisper one word to him.

"Fast."

* * *

_She was scattering unstoppable kisses all over his face the second the door closed._

_Palo Alto hummed, starlit and deserted, behind them, and the sound of crickets seeped in through one of the open windows. His boots squeaked on the floor, and there was the smell of burned toast still lingering, a remnant of how quickly and thoughtlessly he had bolted out of the fourplex only that morning, after getting a call from Dick that both jolted his heart awake and stopped it altogether._

_He was laughing now, sputtering, still carrying her bridal style in his arms, one eye closed tightly against the onslaught of her beaming mouth._

"_Babe, slow d—Artemis, stop!" he chortled, but she didn't, pecking his chin, his nose, his cheek, his eyelids, clasping his head between her blistered fingers. "My face isn't going anywhere."_

"_Yeah, well, it happens to be the dumb face that I haven't seen in three months, so suck it up," she retorted, but gave him the reprieve of drawing away, her hands lowering to link together at the nape of his neck._

_She crossed her legs with coyness he hadn't known she would possess after a period that had required such harshness of her. The cock of her scintillating eyebrow, however, betrayed her._

_He smiled at her, dazedly, a bit giddily, like he couldn't believe his luck. It was a look she'd seen him give her a hundred times before, but it still always managed to lift something inside of her skyward from the ground._

"_Man," he said quietly, with a blissfully bewildered chuckle, just before leaning in and pressing his mouth to hers with an earnest love that made her insides stumble. "It is pathetic how much I missed you."_

"_Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you threatening me with death a couple hours ago?" She snorted. "You ladykiller."_

"_Hey, hold up; I never actually decided," he retorted, raising his eyebrows._

_She hummed thoughtfully before plucking the goggles off of his head with one hand and gripping the edge of his mask in the other, pulling it off of his face, letting it bunch up at the nape of his neck. She flung the goggles decisively aside, where they landed on the couch._

"_Well, Your Honor," she said with mischievously quirked lips, "We're all eagerly awaiting the verdict."_

"_I dunno," he murmured, all pretense of jocularity and banter gone. "Right now I just… I just wanna look at you."_

_Artemis's face softened. She settled into him slightly, her arms relaxing, her eyes drifting over each detail of his face. Now that his mask had opened up new territory for her to explore, she slanted her head and her lips found the bridge of his nose, the space under his eyes, the corner of his mouth, his laugh lines, his eyebrows._

_But she started to fidget after a so many silent seconds of facing down a stare so intense it made her ribs shiver. She ducked her eyes and folded her lips in and nervously asked, "What?"_

"_Nothin'," he replied with a kiss to her nose, sounding dumb with glee. "It's just… nicer than you even know to have you back."_

"_Maybe you should show me," she drawled, waggling her eyebrows and smirking with an incredibly familiar undertone that made his guts start to spring into each other. "In all seriousness, though? Cannot_wait_to get out of this suit."_

_She sent a derisive sneer at the orange fabric, so unexpectedly hateful that it temporarily took him aback._

"_Remind me to throw it in the garbage," she muttered. "Where it belongs. I_never_want to have to wear this thing again."_

_He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, there was the distinctive sound of paws scrabbling across hardwood, and, within seconds, Brucely came thundering around the corner from the hallway. He skidded to an ungraceful, tripping halt the moment he spotted Artemis._

_After only a moment, he perked up immensely and began to leap around and bark and bounce, rearing back on his hind legs and bracing his front paws on Wally's waist, grinning his canine grin up at his long-lost owner. Artemis laughed, reaching down one hand to rub his ears, and Wally took that as the time to set her back onto her feet._

_He stepped slightly back after releasing her, watching her in silence as she clapped her hand and hunkered down to Brucely's laughter, her smile bright and unrestrained and subtly tearful as the dog practically bowled her over, licking her face without restraint._

"_Aw, ew, boy!" she exclaimed, though she made no attempt to shove him off. "Take it easy!"_

_Wally gazed at the two of them with a smile rising on his face that echoed relief, and contentment, and infatuation, and pride. It took Artemis a moment to notice it, but when her eyes casually darted to his and then away again, she had to slow herself and do a double-take._

_Steadily, she rose to her full height again, her arms lingering at her sides. There was maybe a single, starved moment of stillness and connected eyes before Wally blurred forward and crushed his mouth into hers, pushing her hair back with both of his hands and framing her jaw with them, tilting her head back. Her palms found his spine and laid across it and he pulled her closer, and she relished it, marveled at it, the sensation of his Kevlar gloves on her skin, the clumsy nudge of his teeth against her lower lip. And she had missed it, missed the_ presence_of him, the way the sky would miss the sun._

_Her smiling lips were swollen and her sleepy eyes were halfway closed when, pulling her out of her fractional sleep against Wally's steadily moving chest, she heard his cell phone ring._

"_H'llo?" he answered it, his fingers tracing circles onto her elbow._

_She started to drift off again, but suddenly, they stopped. She blinked, her stomach starting to clench._

"_Yeah," he muttered with graveness that, for all her fearsome and unstoppable courage, scared her. "Of course. We'll be right there."_

_There was a straggling string of silence after the light from his phone shut off. She tilted her chin up to look at him from her stretched-out position on the couch._

"_That was Kaldur," he said quietly, his eyes meeting hers hesitantly. "The Reach are… they're trying to destroy the planet. Looks like it was their endgame from the start; they've – set up some kind of magnetic field disruptors all across the globe. We're supposed to rendez-vous in Metropolis; Kaldur needs everyone on deck for this."_

_He drew in a shaking breath, but his lips were twitching upwards traitorously. Artemis returned the expression far too easily._

"_We gotta suit up," he told her. "Now."_

_She gave one stretch before clambering off of him, standing and lifting her arms so that her t-shirt rode up over her abdomen. She turned to face him, grinning, and the soreness in her bones only made the expression brighter._

"_Babe, I love it when you talk business," she teased him. "Hope you kept my old costume intact while I was gone."_

"'_Course I did," he scoffed, surging to his feet. He slung his arm across her shoulders, smirking. "Did you really think I'd forget?"_

"_Well, I don't know, Wally; you can't remember most major holidays, so I think I'm allowed to be skeptical."_

"_Oof." He grimaced, but it vanished in favor of a questioning, but steady smile. "You ready for this?"_

_She braced her hands on his shoulders and tilted her head, half-lidded and smug._

"_Only if you are, slowpoke."_

* * *

"Can I talk now?" Wally asks meekly in a bit of a blurt.

Artemis inhales through her nose, slightly startled at the noise – she'd been starting, miraculously, to fall asleep.

She and Wally are splayed out on their old bed, under the thin white sheets she hasn't washed in a few weeks. Brucely is snoring on their feet, his tail thumping even in his sleep. Artemis is in an old t-shirt from one of the boxes in the hall, and Wally's Flash boxers are obnoxiously red even in the total darkness.

She shifts closer to him, her arm stretched across his abdomen, and rests her ear right over his heart. The beat is frenetic and rapid despite his subdued exterior.

She smiles wanly and nods silently against him.

"I'm gonna make this up to you," he vows, causing everything inside of her to flutter and bounce, just the same way it all had when he'd scooped her into his arms and bumped noses and teeth with her at sixteen. She lifts her head up and drops her chin onto his chest, marveling at his face. He's still going, babbling but fiercely sincere, his fingers pressed against her spine. "And Mom, and Dad, and Dick, and everyone – Brucely, even—"

At the last name, Artemis lets out a laugh that hushes him, and he beams down at her without restraint.

"I get the feeling you haven't done that in a while," he says quietly, tilting his head.

She shakes her head, and they stay like that for a few moments, smiling wordlessly at each other.

"You remember what you said in Paris?" she asks after a time.

He waggles his eyebrows. "I wasn't saying _much_ by the time we—"

She swats him on instinct and her heart trips over itself at how easily the motion had come. Maybe if she concentrates, this won't be so hard, bringing Artemis into the sun again permanently. (She doesn't even let herself dwell on the likelihood that, in the morning, Tigress will be the skin she wakes up in.)

"How we could have our life together," she continues, a bit more shakily. "And still be heroes?"

He nods slowly. "Yeah."

"That's all I'm going to need," she finishes in a whisper, and with that, she snakes her arms around him as best she can and drops her face against the side of his neck, right in the crook of his shoulder. Her limbs encircle him like vines, clutching at him with every scrap of force and strength she has in her, the frantic and constant movement of his skin and bones quelling any unsettled shaking within her.

His fingers find her hair and tangle in it, and he turns his head and drops his chin on top of hers, sighing evenly against her.

"Do I get a second to breathe after being dead for a year?" he asks in a lame attempt at lightness.

She bobs her head against him and draws away, propping herself up on all fours over him and never taking her eyes off of his, never giving him the chance to look away.

"More than sixteen, at least," she replies in equally bad humor.

"Oh, how generous of you," he says, lips quirking, and then, quieter, "I love you."

"Love you, too," she whispers. She doesn't even have to think on it.

Abruptly, he shivers and his teeth chatter. She frowns, and then raises an eyebrow.

"What, are you cold?"

"Uh, yes, standing outside your building in the pouring rain for an hour until somebody let me in can kind of have that side effect," he quips back with an easy shrug through clenched teeth.

She rolls her eyes. "You should shower."

He smirks, leaning up until their noses are touching, and raises his eyebrows against her forehead.

"There room for two?" he asks in his own comical impersonation of sultriness.

"I'm sure if we stay really, really close, we can fit," she replies sagely, biting her lip and clambering off, grasping his wrist in her hand to lead him off of the bed.

They do fit, backs pressed to the dark blue tile, and she runs her hands over his cheeks and neck and shoulders and chest and abdomen and hips with great slowness and care and painstaking attention, swallowing down the sight of him after months of empty walls and chairs and a transparent hologram, his bare skin a scattered map of scars and stories.

"Why're you looking at me like that?" he murmurs, his hair dripping water onto his face from the shower head. She flicks her eyes up to meet his and her fingers hover at his lower lip.

"I dunno," she answers, though it feels stupid. She tries to sound flippant to mask the sheer unbalance she's feeling. "I figure that I should take advantage of the view you could be gone again tomorrow, right? I mean, who knows."

Clearly seeing right through her flippant disguise in an instant, Wally leans down and takes her lips in his again, his hands gripping her head at either side, tangling into the wet strands. She sighs and sinks forward, her thumbs pressing against his hips.

"Whatever, Artemis," he whispers against her mouth, his eyelashes low over his sleepy eyes. "I'm here to stay."

The hot water chooses that moment to run out and suddenly the both of them are being assaulted with skin-chomping iciness. They both yelp and shriek and scramble for the knob, half-laughing and half-swearing as they slip around and bang their joints on the walls, and Artemis doesn't even have the chance to wonder if she's here to stay, too, anymore.

She falls asleep with her ear against Wally's heart, every hazy dream meandering along the valleys between the beats of it. In her sleep, as his fingers brush against her elbow, she thinks of something she'd read in a book once, a long time ago.

"_A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"_

Somewhere, she's moving without any discernible desire for stopping, and Wally's hurtling along beside her with an unstoppable grin on his face, shouting for her to go faster. She sprints. She soars. She races, she leaps, and in the end, she wins, because Wally slows down, gives her a push, and lets her.


	14. Chapter 14

**You have no idea how relieved and happy I am to see that the whole reunion arc was met with (what looks to be) resounding approval. That is undoubtedly the part of this fic that caused me the most stress and second-guessing, so I'm so so thrilled to know it went over well with you guys. **

**I had originally planned for the previous chapter to be the second to last one, to follow it up with a sort of "two months later" kind of epilogue thing, but then I realized exactly how stupid that would be because I wasn't about to pull a Greg Weisman and skip over the nitty-gritty messy development stuff for the sake of a neatly tied little ending. So. (cracks knuckles) This isn't over yet. Not by a long shot. Because since when have _I_ ever let things be easy?**

* * *

Wally is rudely awakened by the sensation of sharp metal jabbing into his throat.

His eyes fly open in an instant, but he stays frozen, clutching the pillow under his head. He shifts his eyes, slowly, to his left, to see a bare arm clenching a knife that's presently poised right at his jugular.

"Okay okay," he whispers to himself, swallowing (and the motion brings his skin closer to the blade than he would prefer). "I'm, uh—"

He turns his head minutely and immediately stiffens, wrenching up every ounce of self-control in him to keep himself from jumping away, because, no matter how many times he's faced down the Joker, no matter how many times he's been assigned a five-page English paper, no matter how many times he's come within an inch of his life on any given mission, he's never been more terrified in his life.

Artemis is sitting up next to him, her teeth bared with feral fury, and the arm that he'd noticed earlier just happens to be hers. Her hair hangs in her face, which is contorted ferociously in either anger or something he _really_ doesn't want to call bloodthirst.

He feels the blade break the skin a little and has to try not to yelp.

"Babe," he settles for saying instead, slowly, quietly. "Put the knife down."

She growls, a terrifying sound from deep in her chest, and Wally raises his hands at either side of his head as best he can while lying down.

"Artemis, it's okay; it's okay," he murmurs. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I promise. It's just me. Just me. Just Wally."

It takes just a second too long for some semblance of recognition to shift in her eyes and coax her into lowering her hand, dropping the knife onto the mattress. Wally gradually moves himself up into a sitting position, but is still unable to control the fact that his breath is coming in and out more quickly than he'd prefer.

"Uh, morning," he greets her in a high voice.

The snarl in her mouth and nose ebbs, and the fearsome spark in her eyes dims, and her raised shoulders go low and benign again. Wally cautiously reaches down with agonizing slowness (for him, anyway) to pluck the knife up between two fingers and drop it on the bedside table next to him.

"Sorry," she says matter-of-factly, but he can hear the uncertain quaver in her voice. "Guess Tigress isn't exactly used to waking up with intruders in the bed, or whatever."

"This is so weird," Wally mutters, but when Artemis shoots him a look, he quickly appends, "But fine! It's fine. Should I, uh… I can sleep on the floor for a few days if you want."

Artemis snorts. "The couch might be a better bet."

"I seriously didn't mean to scare you." He knows that, largely, her reaction has nothing to do with him, but there's no stopping the unsettled (and guilty) sensation in his stomach at the fact that she'd considered him a threat. "But, uh… maybe we should remove all hidden weapons from the premises for now."

She gives him a familiar unimpressed look that instantly assures him that she's back to normal.

"I could still strangle you," she says flatly. "Or smother you. Or break your neck."

"Okay, we can remove the pillows and your hands, too, then," he jokes.

He takes an iota of pride in the way her lips twitch infinitesimally upwards.

"I…" He fidgets with his hands in his lap, picking at the loose threads at the hem of the sheet. "I know I already asked, but, uh… really. What happened? To you, I mean. While I was, uh…"

He gestures lamely and she averts her eyes, pushing some of the rumpled hair that had earlier been dangling in her face back behind her ear. She turns away from him, and he stares at her profile, gulping at the way the shadows are gathering in the corners of her face.

(Artemis, for her part, wars silently with herself: Tigress wants to brag; Artemis, scared and ashamed, wants to lie. She's not entirely sure which of them wins.)

"Killed a few guys," she mutters, curling her fingers and gazing at them with an apathetic shrug. "Tried to kill Lex Luthor. Got the Team royally screwed over in the P.R. department. Reckless habits and stuff; not exactly great for their image. To be fair, though, I _did_ resign for a while before they brought me back on, but then I kinda got suspended for my 'behavior problems'. Whatever."

She gives him a smile that, coupled with her cold words, feels harsh enough to make his heart wince.

"Just reverted back to the stuff Dad taught me." She sneers – _blamefully_. "Nothing major."

Wally's stomach sours at her tone and he grips the sheets more tightly, sighing.

"Artemis, I'm _sorry_," he says, unable to fathom what else he can possibly tell her. "It's not like I did it on purpose; there was… I didn't know what was going to happen, okay?"

"Give me a break," she snaps, her eyes flashing, knifelike, onto his. "You know what would've been nice? A simple little 'I'm just gonna go to the Arctic; if I don't make it back, here's a goodbye,' instead of me suddenly turning around to see you halfway through the zeta tube! 'Didn't know what was going to happen' my _ass_, Wally West; you knew. If you hadn't, you would've at least looked me in the _eye_ before you bolted."

"I-I didn't bolt!" he retorts hotly. "You seriously think that if I'd stopped to tell you good-bye, I would've still gone through with it? There wasn't _time_ for me to be thinking about what I wanted, Artemis; I _wanted_to stay there with you and never have to risk my neck again, and I wanted to tell you so many…" He swallows down the last of the sentence and it festers in the pit of his gut. "You think I'd've left you with_that_, instead of – instead of _Paris_?!"

A heated spasm of fury jolts across her face and his stomach drops.

"Well, wasn't that just _selfless_ of you!" she shouts, lunging to her feet from the bed and facing him with her arms thrown out. "Aren't you just a _stand-up_ guy, giving me Paris over closure!"

"You've got closure now, haven't you?" he exclaims, mirroring her actions in a livid blur. They stare each other down from opposite sides of the bed, savage glares and clenched fists. "Why does any of that stuff matter _now_; aren't I right here?"

"That's not the point!" she snaps, jabbing her index finger in his direction. "That's not the point and you_know_ it. The _point_ is that you dashed off to save the world and you _knew_ how it was probably going to end and you didn't even have the guts to _look_ at me before you did it! I turned around and you were just—"

Her voice catches, but she swallows fiercely and impels herself further.

"That was it," she finishes hoarsely, finally dropping her arms to her sides until her wrists bump against her thighs. "I was stupid enough to blink, and look what happened."

"Artemis, it's not like I _wanted_ to finish off the day by _ceasing_," he snaps. "But it's kind of an occupational hazard! It's part of the _job_; it's what we _do_!"

"What we do?!" she shouts, her eyes flying open wide with rage and bewilderment. "What we _do_?! _You're the one who wanted to retire, Wally_!"

"Yeah, and look how that turned out!" he yells back without thinking. "You just dump the life we made together to risk your life like an idiot, I basically _die_ for a year, and now you're even more messed-up than you were before!"

The silence descends on them in a sudden, plunging drop. There's maybe a heartbeat between the moment he stops talking and the tremor that wrestles its way across her face, but it's exactly enough time for his ribs to clench up and his tongue to go numb and his whole body to bristle with a broiling and absolute panic.

"Artemis," he stutters out, chilled by the stillness in her eyes, the way her mouth thins and her jaw clamps and her nostrils flare. "No, stop; that's not what I—"

"Get out," she says. Her voice is low and disquieting and it may as well be a row of knuckles colliding with his stomach.

He shakes his head mutely, struggling to heave up some adequate words to eradicate the ones still hanging, black and bitter, in the air between them.

The corners of her mouth spasm at his refusal and she bends swiftly down to scoop up her clothes, and then she's already halfway to the door, a stomping flurry of aimless and ire-spurred stumbling. She yanks a t-shirt over her head without a bra and trips into a pair of jeans with the underwear still in place, and he doesn't have the sense to go after her until he's standing alone in the bedroom and hears the clank of keys being torn from the metal dish by the doorway.

He jerks back to attention and speeds out, still completely naked, to block her way. She keeps her dampened eyes focused, unblinking, on the wood of the door over his shoulder.

"Move," she snarls.

"I didn't mean it like that," he insists desperately. "Artemis, please; please, please, please, just wait one second and listen to me; I—"

She growls, low in her throat, and slams both of her palms into him before shoving him bodily aside, ramming him into the wall. The back of his head bangs against the coat rack and sends a flash of white over the backs of his eyes.

He really should be used to being knocked around, but there's something about being on the receiving end of Artemis's wrath that stuns him, that exacerbates the throbs to the point that they go purple and red and blind him. He clutches the back of his skull with one hand and hisses through his teeth, and when he wrenches his eyes open again, it's in time to see Artemis fling the door off the latch – her nose running, her cheeks scarlet, her hair still mussed and knotted – surge out through it, and slam it behind her.

"Artemis!" he yells to the empty apartment, but he makes no efforts to pursue her. "Just wait one…"

He pounds his fist against the wall behind him and shouts, wordlessly, in frustration, before slumping against it, sliding to the floor with a _thud_. He rests his elbows on his knees and grasps at his hair with his shaking hands, gritting his teeth together and hating himself.

"_Second_," he finishes in a useless mumble.

That's when Brucely, in the living room, blinks awake and spots him. His ears jounce up and his whole posture stiffening for several seconds before he lets out an ecstatic bark that nearly rattles the windows and gallops over, scrabbling claws and blundering, flailing legs.

He's in Wally's lap and snuffling at his face in an instant, his tail thundering against Wally's knees.

"Looks like I messed up, boy," Wally sighs when he can no longer ignore the unceasing licks being given to his face. "Hi, by the way. I'm alive. You miss me?"

Brucely woofs enthusiastically and Wally smiles ruefully at the dopey, overjoyed expression and lolling tongue.

"Did she?" he asks, quieter, even though it's stupid because dogs can't talk and magic isn't real and nothing in the world consigns itself to the miraculous no matter how much he wishes it would.

His eyes rove up to the apartment that had, only the night before, made him absolutely certain that he would never have anything resembling an appetite ever again. The walls are bare and dark and there is no color in it, save for the feeble string of paper lanterns over the couch in the living room, flickering from overuse in every color imaginable.

He gets to his feet, his palms sticking to the hardwood floor, and Brucely paces loyally around his ankles, staring up at him.

"Okay, boy," Wally murmurs. "I'm gonna get some pants on, and then I'm gonna forage around for some authentic Gotham City grease cuisine, and then I'm gonna get myself acquainted with this missing year. Sound like a plan?"

Brucely shakes himself out and slobbers with the motion. Wally snorts, running both of his hands back through his hair and halting them at the back of his neck, sighing.

"Guess I'll take that as a yes."

* * *

"_Do you think it'll be enough?" she asked quietly, her eyes focused on the screens in front of her. She opened her mouth to continue, but the sound of an activated zeta tube silenced her, and she turned, surprised, to find the space that Wally had been occupying now empty._

"_Recognized. Kid Flash. B03."_

_She had just a second before the light from the machine engulfed him altogether that his back was turned to her._

_She stood there, her feet rooted firmly in place, her arms hanging at her sides, her throat closing in on itself. Something in her chest was simultaneously hiccuping into motion and irreversibly sinking, but she couldn't bring herself to move._

"_Oh, no," she finally heard herself whisper, shaking her head and wrenching herself into motion. "No, you don't. Don't you dare."_

_Dick's hand grabbed her wrist before she reached the zeta tubes, and when she whirled accusatorially to face him, his solemn and sallow face beckoned her toward the bioship hangar. She was the first to board and the first to disembark, stung into numbness by the ravaging Arctic winds._

* * *

The sky is a rich, hot blue absolutely devoid of clouds. Downtown Gotham is unusually busy, its sidewalks crawling with window-shoppers and a few good old homeless lunatics, its avenues congested by honking Lexuses and sports cars, and the heat is already close to swallowing all of it whole.

Artemis hates it.

It takes her about three blocks to realize that, thanks to her reflection in a glass pane she passes, she isn't exactly dressed in the chicest of garments. She comes to a stiff halt, ignoring the way the sidewalk sears the soles of her feet, and scowls at herself.

Her hair is mussed and out of place, a few rumpled strands dangling past her nose. Thanks to the fact that she's not wearing a bra, even her loose shirt doesn't leave much to the imagination. Her fly is halfway open, there's a hickey on her shoulder, and her nose is scrunched with displeasure, disrupting her still-flushed cheeks.

"_Tch_," she spits out at herself before tossing her head, shoving her hair out of her face, and continuing on her way.

Thankfully, it's Gotham, so she doesn't get many strange looks for her _attire_, probably – she expects that some of the lingering, skeptical glances have a little more to do with her undoubtedly rage-contorted expression and tight fists. She probably looks like she's about to commit murder, but whatever; that's a standard weekend activity in this city.

She rounds a corner, storming past the café with intent and belligerency that clearly startles the outside diners, slams her bare feet onto a stoop five doors down, and crams her finger onto the buzzer three times.

"Jeez, it's about _time_," a feminine voice answers after a second. "I thought our friendship was dead to you, or something. Uh, why are you dressed like a frumpy fugitive?"

"You have ten seconds to open this door before I move on to my _other_ magician sounding board," Artemis snarls.

"Betrayal!" Zatanna gasps, and Artemis hears a click. "Come on up, Prince Charming. Sorry I can't let down my hair."

Artemis rolls her eyes with a tight jaw and shoves the door open, her feet thundering on the carpeted surface of the stairs. She hates herself for feeling winded before she reaches the eighth floor, but she gulps down a breath and bounds up the rest of the way with gritted teeth. Zatanna is already standing in the open doorway to her flat halfway down the hall, one hand on her hip and the other grasping the doorknob.

"I figured I'd save my door the trouble of being kicked down," she comments. "Good news for _you_, though, is that I brought home an inhuman amount of Cadbury eggs."

Artemis narrows her eyes – somehow, despite the fact that her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she's clad in a Green Lantern t-shirt and a pair of Gotham Academy sweatpants (which has always been highly suspicious, if you ask Artemis), Zatanna still manages to look like the infinitely more well-dressed of the two of them.

"Just get out of the way," Artemis growls. "I need to pace a few laps on your floor before I stop wanting to break everything I see."

"Whoa, message received," Zatanna comments, tossing up both of her hands in surrender and sidestepping to allow Artemis full entry into the flat.

Artemis marches in, her arms ramrod straight at her sides, not noticing Zatanna's exaggerated grimace at her state. She does as she'd said she would – she strides in circles around Zatanna's living room, grinding her teeth and muttering seditiously to herself, her legs slicing past the sagging purple couch and wicker chair and glass table laden in enough coffee table books about Italian cinema to sink a whole battalion. Zatanna watches her impartially, leaning against the now-closed door with one heel on the wood and her arms crossed at her chest.

"Um, not that this isn't super fun to watch, or anything," Zatanna finally says, "But I think you're going to wear a trench into the shag rug. The—" She winces when Artemis, seeming to ignore her, stomps furiously on the mentioned rug. "Very expensive byzantium shag rug. Artemis, sit down before I have to make you."

"You wouldn't," Artemis snarls threateningly.

Zatanna blows a strand of hair out of her face before flicking her wrist in Artemis's direction and muttering, "_Tis nwod_."

Artemis lets out a loud "_oof_" as she's knocked several feet backwards into the wicker chair, collapsing squarely into it. She groans loudly and struggles to stand up again, but her elbows stay stuck to the armrests and her butt to the cushion.

"I would," Zatanna retorts cheerily.

She flounces in, radiating self-satisfaction, before sitting primly on the edge of the couch, closest to Artemis. Artemis rolls her eyes hugely and sneers at the ceiling, dropping her head back.

"I hate you," she grumbles.

Zatanns shrugs. "Sweet, but… kind of irrelevant. What the _heck_ is going on? Who let you out of the house in _that_?"

She points derisively to Artemis's get-up, eliciting another rotation of eyes.

"I mean, I'm assuming they're related, but—"

"Okay, you know how I hung up on you yesterday?" Artemis cuts in, but she doesn't give Zatanna the time to reply. "Well, guess who showed up outside my door ten seconds later! Yeah, the prodigal idiot. Really great of him to just drop in on me like nothing's happened, isn't it?"

"Well, I mean, for him, technically, it hasn't," Zatanna says quietly, but Artemis rants over her and doesn't hear it.

"He's sorry!" she barks. "Did I _tell_ you that? None of this 'Artemis, he wanted me to tell you he loved you' crap – no, apparently now it's 'Artemis, he wanted me to tell you he was sorry.' _Swell_ of him, huh? So we yell at each other a lot, kind of our norm, and then things go, uh, I don't know – things…"

She slows, sounding winded, and slackens slightly in the chair, her shaking fingers going to her forehead. She bites her lip.

"For… a while, Zee, it was like—" She scoffs in disgust at herself, looking down. "He managed to make me think that going back to the way things were wouldn't be so hard. I just kind of – switched off all the worrying and freaking out and remembered who he _was_, and that had… favorable results, I guess."

Zatanna's eyes widen, ecstatically scandalized.

"You've gotta be _joking_," she gasps. "Did you…" She lowers her voice. "_Teg nwod dna ytri_—"

"Yes!" Artemis snaps, managing to wrench her arms off of the chair enough to toss them in the air and strangle some invisible neck. "Yes, Zee, we _did_. Real mature and level-headed of us, right? Just jump right back into everything, no problem! How _stupid_ do I have to be to think that's not going to go _wrong_?"

"Whoa, how wrong," Zatanna asks flatly, and her raised eyebrows immediately drop into an uncertain frown. "As in, like—"

"No, I mean… _that_ part was… fine," Artemis flummoxes, glowering at her hands and shrugging jerkily. "Like, uh. Like usual." She gestures rapidly in frustration. "Ugh, look; that's not the point!"

"Oh great," Zatanna exclaims with a wince. "All of that and it's not even the _point_?"

"No," Artemis says darkly, fisting one hand into her hair and tugging at it, huffing out a breath through her flared nostrils. "But… I-I kinda woke up this morning and, uh, tried to kill him."

Zatanna visibly blanches.

"Please tell me _that's_ the point," she says weakly.

Artemis snorts, but the sound is humorless.

"Uh, no again. The _point_ is that I…" She gulps, releasing her hair and dropping the now-limp hand into her lap. "This whole thing is… too broken to even _try_ fixing. We _can't_ go back; not anymore, because I'm too screwed up."

"No, you're not—" Zatanna starts to counter.

"Yes, I am; he said so himself!" Artemis shouts, cutting the room into quiet. Her throat twinges on the sour aftertaste of the words, of the sentiment encased in them, and she slumps, shaking her head infinitesimally. "Guess it was only a matter of time, huh?"

"Can I _please_ get a word in edgewise now?" Zatanna demands a bit hotly. "Because, I mean, if you just wanted to hear yourself rant, all you had to do was go stand in an alleyway."

Artemis settles churlishly into the cushion further, but says nothing, which Zatanna apparently takes as a sign to pinch the bridge of her nose and exhale sharply through her teeth.

"_First_ of all," she says crisply. "I cannot _believe_ you guys banged and you didn't call me _immediately_afterwards. Second, I'm sorry that you guys are fighting, but maybe if you just settle down and switch Tigress off for a second, which I _know_ you can do, you'll figure out exactly what the problem is. Which brings me to my third point, and this is the important one, so _please_ pay attention—"

She shifts forward, clasping her hands in her lap and giving the most earnest stare Artemis has ever seen, her clear blue eyes sincere and beseeching.

"Your problem," she tells her softly, "is that whole 'wanting to go back to the way things were' issue. You_can't_, Artemis. That's life. That's how it is now. You can't go back, and neither can he, but it's okay – because this isn't _about_ going back. It's about going forward."

Artemis blinks at her, and her feverish heartbeat finally starts to calm. It's a little hard to register what Zatanna's saying, at first – her ears are still thundering with leftover rebellion from their encounter with Wally's harsh and blurted-out words – but it settles on her within a few moments. She curls and uncurls her fists.

"And I'm sure that whatever he said," Zatanna continues with the same unusually tender inflections, "he either didn't mean, or got misinterpreted on because you were looking for any excuse to run out of there. Which is totally fine, since, y'know, you've just gone through a year of basically switching personalities to cope with something that would've totally destroyed you if you hadn't, and it's not like you wanted Tigress being bedfellows with a nice guy like Wally, or whatever. But – and I can't _believe_ I have to tell you this…"

She sighs, lowering her head to keep Artemis's eyes on hers when they start to stray.

"He'd never want to hurt you on purpose; you _know_ that, right?" she asks. "He loves you so much it makes me want to puke. And the scale on your side is even, from what I remember."

Artemis folds her lips in tightly for a moment.

"Yeah," she whispers. "From what you remember."

"Listen to me," Zatanna orders, pointing a finger. "And don't get me wrong; I am _just_ as unhappy with Wally Foot-In-Throat West as I am with you right now, but: He's freaked, too. _Think_ about it. A whole year's gone by without him, and it's been a pretty _huge_ year in terms of people's _lives_ totally changing – and it doesn't feel like any time's passed for him. He's still expecting everything to be the same as it was because that's where he just came from. He came from June 20, 2016, and now – you're hiding behind a different person, Dick's off doing who _knows_ what, his parents are probably totally destroyed and still trying to fight their way back from being empty nesters, and I've got bangs now!" She gestures illustratively to her face, and only then does Artemis notice the sleek, straight curtain that's now cut across her forehead. "It's a lot for a guy to take in, _especially_ a guy whose stupid brain moves as fast as Wally's, and then for you to wake him up with a knife to the throat instead of, I don't know, like fifty waffles? Not exactly the best 'welcome home' present ever, especially when he doesn't feel like he ever left home in the first place."

"I can't control it!" Artemis retorts, ignoring the way that Zatanna's accusation had blasted through her like a bullet. "I spent _months_ on that stupid submarine training myself to be ready to fight off an attack at any _second_, and then I have to put the whole readjusting thing on hold so I can use _whatever_ I became down there to my advantage when my—when _Wally_…"

She doesn't know why she can't finish. She bites her lower lip, hard, until it sends a blossoming of pain through her skin, and roughly blinks back the moistness welling up behind her eyelids. Zatanna's shoulders sag with resignation, but her mouth is still hewn with resolve.

"Like I said," she repeats, cracking her neck and slowly, cautiously, reaching an ungloved hand over to clasp Artemis's. "Going back… isn't an option anymore. Things might've been easier, happier, better then; I don't know and you shouldn't care, because they're over." She adjusts slightly, and then her face loosens as something occurs to her. "You know that part in _Alice in Wonderland_ – duh, of course you do; it's rhetorical – where she comes back from her little jaunt a completely different person, and she says, 'I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then?'"

Artemis blinks in bewilderment at the fact that Zatanna has just dredged up the very passage that had squirmed through the back of her skull the night before, as Wally had stared her down with tears in his eyes.

"That's you. You can't go back; you have to go _forward_. And Wally's… a fast guy. He might be a pretty good asset to have in your lane on the way there, is all I'm saying."

Artemis marvels at her, scoffing quietly.

"Anything else?" she asks with a trickle of cynicism.

Zatanna flops back on the couch, her bare feet swinging into the air with the motion.

"Yeah," she says. "You're really, really dumb. That's it. So how about we get into those Cadbury eggs?"

Artemis toys absentmindedly with a loose string on the chair cushion – bright red, and frayed at the end, but still sturdy and sleek in her fingers despite its worn-down ends.

"Sounds like a plan," she mutters, but not before she detaches herself from the chair, crosses the floor on shuffling knees, and pulls Zatanna into an immediately mutual hug.

"You have been _way_ overdue for one of these, girlfriend," Zatanna comments with a wobbly laugh.

Artemis nods, squeezing her fleetingly, gratefully.

"You have no idea."

* * *

"You have been _way_ overdue for one of those," Dick quips as Wally finishes the last of his triple-decker bacon-and-nacho cheeseburger.

"You have no idea," Wally says, slumping back in the booth with a satisfied burp.

Dick wrinkles his nose.

"And, uh, right _now_, you're overdue for an 'excuse me.'" He sniffs. "Just because we're not eating out of Bruce's dining room doesn't mean you get to act like a total peasa—"

"Jeez, excuse me," Wally groans, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Nice to know that a year of having to live without me has given you a little incentive to ease up and get off my case."

"Please," Dick retorts. "Not even ceasing can give you _that_ luxury."

Wally chuckles in a subdued hum and reaches forward to fiddle with the corner of his crumpled napkin. The plexiglass window of the diner turns the sunlight outside to white illumination for the checkered linoleum floor and torn red leather booths. Shadows pass over the surface of the salt-and-pepper-dusted table, rippling on the contours of Wally's burger wrapper.

"So, uh, do I have to play twenty questions to figure out what you screwed up, or can you just tell me?" Dick asks matter-of-factly, leaning forward and folding his hands on the table.

Wally starts, staring in dumbfoundedly at him.

"I didn't say anything about screwing _anything_ up," he splutters.

"Yeah, not in so many words, but I get the _funny_ feeling that if you're not spending some quality time with our resident crossbow-wielding assassin after a few months of separation, you're either a _really_ good friend, or you screwed something up." At Wally's still-baffled expression, Dick flashes him a dazzling grin. "Hey, I'm a _detective_. Do _any_ of you people know what that means?"

"Well, I mean, uh…" Wally rubs the back of his neck, biting the inside of his cheek. "It's… complicated."

"Dude, I'm the king of complicated; have you _seen_ the way I interact with Barbara?" Dick retorts in an instant. "Talk to me. You're normally so _good_ at it."

"It just sounds ridiculous and terrible when I say it out loud," Wally whines.

"Please. I live for that kinda stuff." Dick snickers. The corners of his clear blue eyes crinkle together with amusement, but even their mischievous twinkle still leaves room for the earnestness shifting in their depths. "Just spill, Wally. How bad can it be?"

"I… I told Artemis she was messed up," Wally blurts out. "After she, uh, tried to slit my throat, but that's not important."

"Of course," Dick deadpans, leaning back to look at the ceiling. "She almost splits open your jugular and the thing you're worried about is the fact that you said the worst possible thing to her."

Wally pulls a pained face.

"Th…_anks_, buddy," he grinds out, dropping his forehead onto the table with a loud _clunk_ that garners several skeptical stares (all of which Dick magnificently ignores). "Hit the nail on the head. But listen, I – I didn't mean it like, _messed up_, like a _problem_; like she was some kind of _head case_ I didn't trust to let me live through the morning; I meant… I don't know what I meant."

He grips his head at either side and muffles his groans on the table.

"Have you considered, I don't know, _telling_ her this?" Dick suggests dryly, playing with the leftover toothpick from his tuna melt. "I thought that years of experience taught you that talking things out with Artemis is always the way to go."

"I don't know," Wally mutters. "There was just… there was something about her face. The way she _looked_at me, after I said it. I feel like I screwed things up for real, for _good_."

"That would definitely be impressive," Dick says. "Especially considering exactly how much work it would take on your part to make her have even the _tiniest_ bone of contention with you after she's been all torn up over you for the past year."

"Isn't that enough?" Wally demands. "Dick, she saw me come back in the Arctic and she _bolted_. I had to get her address from _you_. She's… it's great that I'm back, and all, but… maybe she…"

He runs a hand through his hair, halting it at the back of his skull and gazing, half-lidded and forlorn, at the silver napkin dispenser.

"Adapted," he finishes in a resigned mutter.

"Yeah, you know how she pulled that off?" Dick cracks his knuckles calmly. "By dragging Tigress back into the front lines. Artemis is sitting back somewhere waiting for Tigress's shift to be over. And once it _is_, I'm sure that calling her 'messed-up' won't be much more than a tiny bump on the road back to being repulsive."

"You're gonna have to find someone else to gross you out now, looks like." Wally mopes, flicking at a stray French fry. "Since she's probably not even gonna look at me now. I crossed a _line_, Dick. I made her think that I… that she was _bad_, somehow, and I was supposed to be the _one_ person she could come back to who would always be there to remind her that she wasn't. That she never had been. And now she must think I'm feeling sorry for her and that's the only reason I've stuck around this long, and just…"

He trails off, shoving his palms onto his tightly closed eyes and baring his teeth in miserable frustration. He rubs at his eyes until the lids turn red and sighs erratically, hanging his head.

"It's like I trip once," he croaks. "For maybe a few seconds… and once I manage to get my footing back again, she's _gone_. Replaced by this… completely different person, and I _hate_ feeling like I'm responsible for whatever it is she's apparently had to 'become' since I, uh, _ceased_." He shakes his head. "Man, that is weird to say. And scientifically impossible, actually, if we wanna get into it—"

"We don't," Dick assures him with a simper.

"Great; way to take away the one thing I'm actually _guaranteed_ not to screw up talking about," Wally grumbles before letting out a loud groan, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I hate this. I hate myself."

"Cry me a river," Dick mutters, reaching across the table to clap him on the shoulder. "Wally, seriously? Snap out of it. You're gonna be okay; you _both_ are; it's what you _do_."

"It's what we _used_ to do!" Wally corrects him. "In case you hadn't noticed, things are a little different now!"

"Yeah, which is why going back to the way they were isn't an option," Dick says, pointing a finger at him. "But going _forward_ is, right? Look, if you keep trying to somehow turn back time so that everything's the same as it used to be, you're just gonna be fighting a losing battle. Trust me, Wally." His voice quiets, and his eyes stray downwards with a sudden disconsolate glimmer in them. "I know. I know what happens when you try to go back instead of… learning to accept where you are. It just slows you down and makes things worse."

"I'm—" Wally's breath hitches and he scratches at his wrist to distract his hands from wanting, inexplicably, to clasp Dick's. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean—"

"What're you sorry for?" Dick asks airily, now promptly and perfectly back to his usual façade. "The past is the past, dude; I've learned to take it in stride. You and Artemis are never gonna be exactly the same as you used to be. You guys were probably all ready to just pick up where you left off the second she got back from that mission, but even then, things wouldn't've been completely perfect."

"I'm not asking for perfect," Wally sighs, slumping forward and propping his temple up by the heel of his palm. "I just… I'm just asking for _okay_. You know? I just want her – _us_ – to be okay."

"Then tell her that," Dick says with a wave of his hand. "Man, if I had a nickel for every time I had to say_that_ to you, Wayne Manor would look like a shanty, is all I'm saying." He rests his chin in his palm, glancing sideways out the window and blowing some loose hair out of his face. "You just need to sit down and talk to her. Take things slow. I've got even money going with Zee that you guys have already fornicated with_great_ enthusiasm, if you know what I mean—"

Wally splutters, his ears going scarlet.

"—which is, y'know, fine and all," Dick continues undaunted, "But now that you've had your fun, it's time to stick your feet in the nasty stuff. And probably brush up on your self-defense lessons, at least until you can find a place to sleep that doesn't risk evisceration with your morning waffles."

"I'm not _leaving_ her," Wally insists, though his ears are still pink. "Are you kidding? I don't want her sleeping in that place by herself."

"I'm _pretty_ sure she can take care of herself." Dick snorts. "Just let things… settle. Figure out the right things to say instead of just running your mouth. In the meantime, we _might_ have an opening on the Team for you."

Wally's face splits into an immediate, thrilled grin that admittedly surprises him.

"That's…" He shakes his head with a chuckle. "That might be kinda good, actually."

If his smile had been ebullient, it looks like the dimmest expression in the world compared to Dick's.

"You're serious?" he asks giddily. "Dude, I thought I was gonna have to like, twist your arm and hold your Oreos hostage!"

"First of all, I'm pretty sure my Oreos have gone a _little_ stale," Wally replies. "And second of all… I dunno."

He thinks back to Artemis's words the night before, and to Paris, to the whirling winds of the empty city tousling her hair and crawling up his back. He thinks back to the glowing red impression the burning ruins of Mt. Justice had made on the dark Happy Harbor sky. He thinks back to the summit, to true friends, to the natural energy bounding through his blurring limbs as he sped circles around every guard he could find. He thinks back to running his thumbs over the scarlet goggles in the bathroom, just a few hours before deploying to Metropolis, and locking eyes with himself in the mirror to find a scrawny, idealistic sixteen-year-old grinning back at him.

"I feel like it'd do me some good," he finishes with quirked lips. "But, uh… I _might_ have to think of a new alias. Since the yellow and red does such wonders for Bart's stature, and all."

"I wouldn't worry about that just yet," Dick replies. "Waiter, check please. He'll pay."

Wally rolls his eyes. "Of course. My millionaire best friend _still_ makes me pay for the lunch dates."

"And you're always _such_ a gentleman about it." Dick sniggers, filled with mirth and liberation. Wally shakes his head in fond disbelief when the waiter drops the bill in front of him, but pulls it over, rifling around in his pocket for the twenty his mother had given him the day before.

"I missed you, dude," Wally mutters after a time, finally looking up to meet Dick's eye with a lopsided smile.

"Uh, it hasn't been _that_ long, by your calendar—"

"No, I mean…" Wally sighs, folding his arms loosely and resting his elbows on the table. "I missed… seeing you act like yourself. Being in charge of the Team would've been great for you if it'd gone on at _any_other time, and just – seeing you keeping the lid on all those secrets and lies and that whole insane plan… I don't know. It kinda sucked, watching that eat you up." His smile widens warmly. "But it's… nice to have you back. After all of this."

"Yeah," Dick agrees, quiet, rueful (but at ease). "Looks like we can finally put a ribbon on this thing. And for what it's worth… I missed you, too."

"Aw, shucks," Wally laughs halfheartedly, but Dick shakes his head.

"I did, Wally," he insists, sounding, suddenly, almost hoarse. "More than you kn… more than I ever_thought_ I would." He snorts. "Pretty pathetic, I know."

"Nah," Wally denies with a shake of his head.

"Guess it happens to the best of us," Dick sighs. "I mean, what do you expect, when we lose somebody like_you_? The biggest idiot I've ever met and you're _still_ the glue that holds us all together. You know what the stupidest thing about all that is, though?"

Wally, having been distracted by the way that the bright red cellophane on the toothpick reflects on the table in a dozen fragmented particles of color and light, absentmindedly responds at first.

"Nope; what?" he says before returning his attention to the conversation.

Dick glances up with certainty and looks him in the eye.

"That you don't even know it."

* * *

In retrospect, Wally should have foreseen that any one-on-one reunion with Bart would be detrimental to his lung capacity.

It's been close to four minutes and, based on his count, sixteen seconds, and Bart still hasn't relinquished his (extremely tight, extremely confining) hold around Wally's arms and waist. The younger boy's face is squished into Wally's shirt and his whole body is vibrating with what Wally can only (even in his oxygen-deprived state) describe as sheer happiness.

Jay and Joan's living room is as immaculate as always, warm colors and high couches and the familiar ticking grandfather clock that had once looked like the tallest thing in the world to a young Wally.

"I'msogladyou'realiveI'msogladyou'realive," Bart babbles, his voice buzzing with the movement of his body. "You'realiveyou'realiveyou'realiveyou'realive—"

"Yeah, but I won't be for long if you don't—_hnk_—ease up a little," Wally wheezes, but Bart shakes his head fiercely against his chest.

"Inyourdreams," he retorts, though his voice is, blessedly, a bit slower. "ThishasbeentheworstyearofmylifeImissedyousomuch—" 

"Bart," Wally croaks, and he's positive that he's turning blue. He manages to wrench one arm free enough to pry Bart off of him, gasping loudly at his freedom and bracing himself on his knee, coughing. When Bart starts toward him again, he puts up a finger. "Do _not_ touch me. You've fulfilled your hug quota for the next five hundred years."

"Come _onnn_," Bart whines. "Listen here, first cousin once-removed, old buddy, old pal, my hero, crashest ghost in the universe – I've had to deal with a whole year of thinking it's _my_ fault that you're even dead to begin with; d'you know how long that is in speedster time? Like ten gazillion light years!"

"Whoa, whoa," Wally halts him, finally straightening up and frowning (and only sort of at the fact that Bart seems to have gone through a growth spurt in his absence, not to mention the fact that his once boyish face is now slightly more chiseled and his voice isn't cracking as much). "What do you mean, your fault? You didn't do anything."

"Uh, yeah, _duh _I didn't do anything; that was the problem!" Bart exclaims, throwing his hands out before sighing and dropping them again. "I could've… done _something_. Could've helped you. Instead I just stood there. Less than two weeks later and I'm running around in a costume I don't deserve."

"Hey," Wally chides him, jabbing a finger in his direction. "I _wanted_ you to have that costume; remember what I said at the summit?"

"Yeah, of course I do!" Bart retorts. "But the conditions of that deal didn't have anything to do with you_dying_; I thought you'd still be… around, so I wouldn't be a _total_ fraud!"

"A fraud?" Wally frowns, his heart sinking at the sight of Bart's darkened expression, his slightly running nose. "Bart, what're you—"

"It was like I was stomping around trying to be somebody everyone knew I wasn't," Bart mumbles, sniffing. "Artemis kept… thinking I was you if she wasn't looking hard enough. Sometimes she'd even call me Wally, if I'd get hurt. So I started keeping the dumb suit on stealth mode, because at least that way I wasn't a _complete_ sham, but it's not like I could just forget the fact that I was a cheap replacement for the real thing."

Wally gawks unabashedly at him.

"I, uh, honestly don't know whether to be flattered or offended," he says after a time. "A cheap replacement? Bart, you're the fastest out of _all_ of us – you could lap me a dozen times with your hands behind your back! Probably going backwards! On water! What part of that says 'cheap replacement?' If anything, you were an improvement!"

Bart's chin jerks up and Wally gives an imperceptible start at the sight of his face: it's flushed, and twisted, and dampened by messy trails of overflowing tears.

"You're so _stupid_!" Bart shouts at the top of his lungs. Wally jumps, admittedly and embarrassingly terrified at the potent, wrathful volume. "Who cares if you're not as fast as we are?! You saved the stupid world, didn't you?! You stopped the MFD, didn't you?! And by the way, it turns out Luthor was trying to off me _and_gramps, so if you hadn't been there, we'd've both been dead! How much of the mode are you even _on_? It's not a stupid _contest_! You're better than both of us put together and you _know_ it, so just – shut up and stop it!"

"Buddy," Wally says quietly, hunkering down to one knee and reaching forward to loosely grasp Bart's now-shaking upper arms, to try to still his quivering, bitten-down lower lip and dribbling nose. "Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Bart shoves him roughly off. It takes every ounce of resolve that Wally has not to visibly wince from the qualm in his throat, and his arms go to hang limply at his sides, and his stomach hardens with contrition. He gulps and looks to the rug, to the fading stains and loose threads, his fingers curling loosely.

The silence is abruptly eradicated by a sudden blast of air in his face, and there's a noticeable delay in his reaction time to noticing that Bart's arms have flung themselves around his neck and are presently strangling him with relief again.

"You really gotta make up your mind," Wally chokes, but he ropes Bart into a reciprocal hug anyway, concentrating on the holes in the cottage cheese ceiling to keep himself from passing out.

"Please," Bart whispers, in a voice as flimsy and uncertain as a child's, "Please don't leave again."

Wally softens. He's seen his fair share of Bart's slips in persona, gotten a few glimpses into the fragmented and wilting shell around which Impulse was built, not just for disguising, but for forgetting. Recognizing Bart's broken whimper for what it is, he holds him more tightly, sighing and rubbing circles onto his back.

"I mean, I can't make any promises, but… I'll make an active effort."

Bart weakly punches him in the shoulder with a hiccup.

"Fine," he rasps, sagging. "_Instead_ you can just promise me that you'll quit moding yourself. You're better than that."

"Jeez, Bart," Wally mutters, drawing slightly away and bracing Bart at the shoulders. "Who gave you permission to get all… mature and wise and cool while I was gone?"

Bart's smile wobbles slightly, but it's still there, and it makes Wally's chest give off a spark of satisfaction.

"Dunno," he mumbles, wiping his nose noisily. "I had big shoes to fill."

Wally expels a quiet laugh through his nose and ruffles Bart's hair, which causes the younger boy to snicker and, after a second, flail out of reach.

"Well, you, uh… you did fine," Wally tells him genuinely. "Great, even."

"Thanks." Bart's grin fades slightly, but his eyes are no longer chilled or stony. He bites his lip apprehensively for a second before speaking. "So what… I mean, where did you go?"

"Wow," Wally mutters, not unkindly. "You just… jump right on in there, don't you."

"Nobody's asked you, have they?" Bart stands, moving to sit on the couch, and Wally automatically joins him. The cushions smell like oatmeal and lavender, the same way they always have.

"Nah," he mumbles. "I mean, uh… I guess I kinda told Artemis some stuff, but not anything specific. I didn't wanna freak her out."

"A wise choice." Bart scratches his head. "I just, uh… it sounds like it was kind of… a speedster thing. So, y'know, if you wanna get it off your chest, I might get it better than the average slowpoke."

Wally scoffs, but with amusement rather than derision. "Yeah, maybe."

Bart watches him expectantly. Wally leans back on the couch, folding his arms at his chest and gazing distantly at the ceiling.

The memory starts to come: of the world, white and brilliant and impossible to see, blazing past him in indistinct but impossibly beautiful streaks. Of his chest, ablaze with exhaustion and shoved mercilessly to its limit. Of his eyes, stinging and watering even behind the protection of the goggle lenses; of his feet, numb with motion, unstoppable; of the power and the loss of direction coursing through him as if he was a divining rod aimed for glory. Of losing track of time, and of how many times his heels would hit the ground made of air he couldn't reach, until, on occasion, for instants that he barely remembered after they were done shooting past him, he'd remember blonde hair or bitten fingernails or a limber silhouette against the moonlight, and a name would come out of him, a name he was both far too conscious of and inexplicably unfamiliar with, and she'd turn her head or her breath would catch but then he would be gone again, hurtling through the void, until a fierce squall of frigid air slammed into him and he was on all fours in the snow, already rapidly forgetting the journey he'd just spent a few seconds taking.

The place had been filled with voices and tears and shouting, Christmas lights and subway signs and sidewalks, fireflies, baseball fields, earthquakes and rubble and thunderstorms and quiet living rooms, all of the scraps of carpet his feet would never touch again. No one had said his name, but they'd all been thinking it at him, alternately crushing him and shoving him onwards.

"It was fast," he hears himself murmur. "So fast it scared me. It was like everything I was… all of my_speed_… came from there. Every second I'd ever lived was in there, going past me, and no matter how fast I ran, it kept trying to make me go faster. And I didn't feel that different, coming out, but at the same time – everything's even slower now than it was before, but it's not like I'm not going at the same pace; it's… like I learned how to stand still again, to help myself learn to go faster."

He shakes his head. "It doesn't make any _sense_."

"So it was an alternate dimension for speedies," Bart summarizes, tapping his chin. "Hermano. I think you might've discovered a new _plane_." He sits bolt upright, beaming in excitement and bouncing. "Dudedudedude, what're you gonna call it? Huh? You gotta name it!"

Wally snorts and rolls his eyes, but humors him regardless.

"Think I'll call it… the Speedway," he says after a time, gesturing grandly as though envisioning a marquee.

Bart brays out a laugh. "That is _so_ lame. How about the Speed… 'Force?'"

Wally lets out a _tch_ sound. "Speaking of lame! See, kid; this is why we don't leave _you_ in charge of the christenings. That's _my_ area of expertise."

"Yeah, I can totally see that," Bart retorts. "Since 'Kid Flash' is such an awesome alias."

"Hey," Wally snaps with furrowed eyebrows. "For your information—"

Before he can reach another syllable, Bart has zipped up and sped out of the room, down the hallway, and he's back in again in less than the blink of an eye.

"—that name is awesome," Wally finishes primly.

His eyes are drawn to the folded gold-and-scarlet Kevlar in Bart's hands. They widen with astonishment.

"Whoa, Bart, I can't—"

"Yeah, so awesome that maybe it's time you took it back for a while," Bart talks over him, extending his arms toward Wally, who's still seated on the couch. The goggles glint on top of them.

"I can't," Wally repeats, shaking his head.

Bart rolls his eyes hugely and drops the suit in Wally's lap. The goggles land against his palm and he glances down at them, lifting them slightly, frowning at the way they glisten, as though untouched.

"I'm…" The words catch under his tongue and he looks back to Bart, helplessly holding up the goggles. "Are you… sure?"

"Yeah," Bart affirms, closing his hand around the goggles in Wally's palm to keep them there. "I don't think I'm set for the big leagues yet anyway. Plus, your costume gives me wedgies."

Wally's half-lidded smile is a little rueful, but fond. He curls his fingers around the goggles and nods.

"It kinda does tend to do that. So…" He clears his throat. "You gotta come up with some awesome new name of your own now, or…?"

"Eh, think I'll stick with Impulse." Bart stretches. "Suits me a little better anyway. For now." He freezes, and beams, realizing his genius. "Get it? Suits? Ha, _ha_!"

"Yeah," Wally murmurs, grinning at the buoyant pride swelling up within him. "I do."


	15. Chapter 15

**We're really in the home stretch now, you guys. I am _scrambling_ to tie up every thread that I can, include every nod or last hurrah people want to see. I had to kind of cheat with a few and use flashbacks, but hopefully it's still, uh, acceptable.**

**Super special thanks this time around to Izzy, who looked over this thing like three times; to sodalimepop for inspiring me _constantly_ with her adorable art; to Cat for giving me not one, but _two_ gorgeous graphics between the last update and this one (for that, and for her everything, I have written Wally-Conner); and to everyone (to be named later) for all of their wonderful suggestions for things to include in these final chapters. Hope you guys enjoy!**

* * *

_The real world was a beautiful place and it was full of surprises._

_(Conner (that was what M'gann had decided to call him, and it was a good name; it was ordinary and woody and his and hers) eventually learned to stop promptly reacting to those surprises with precipitous violence. He was only sent to the Happy Harbor Jail once, and he was only there for about three hours before Red Tornado posted bail, and he only had to apologize once to the woman whose car had wound up pulverized because of its malfunctioning alarm. The Justice League had paid for the damages, and he'd been read the riot act by Batman and paid attention to none of it, because he'd needed to concentrate on ignoring Superman in exactly the right way, so he liked to think he hadn't fouled up too badly.)_

_He stared at Kid Flash's house with his fists at his sides, concentrating without blinking on the single illuminated upstairs window as though certain it would turn on him. There were still fireworks bursting in the distance. Kid Flash zipped up behind him, clapping him on the back and making him jump._

_"Supey Dupey Doooo!" Kid Flash hollered with his arms spread wide, causing Conner's ears to ring. "Welcome to 0001 Cemetery Lane!"_

_When Conner (then-unnamed) scowled at him, he immediately slumped, biting his lip._

_"Uh, that's a – that's a reference to the—oy. This is gonna take a while. Never mind. Let's just go in."_

_Upon entering, Wally herded Conner onto the couch, where the burlier boy sat with his hands clasped in his lap and his knees bumping rhythmically together as he waited for Wally to explain the situation to his parents. He quietly absorbed his surroundings – warm walls, lots of family photos, the subtle scent of pancake batter even though it was well past midnight. He fidgeted once before forcing himself to stay perfectly still, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall._

_Mary and Rudy were nice. Mary gave him food and Rudy asked him questions about his favorite bands, which Wally loudly objected to, citing Conner's inexperience with the quotidian and the popular, so Rudy shrugged and asked Conner about his favorite planet instead._

_"Mars," Conner grunted back. He had liked what the G-Gnomes had told him about Mars – its bright red surface and its dissonantly frigid atmosphere, its yawning caves and dusty impressions amongst the stars._

_"You want the bed?" Wally asked a while later. Conner blinked at his cozily cluttered room, laden with spaceship models and action figures and large poster of a blonde girl in a red bikini that made him uncomfortable._

_"No," Conner said. He didn't. He had no idea how to sleep lying down._

_Wally visibly loosened. "Thank _gosh_; I was so not ready to spend the night on the floor. I'll get your sleeping bag!"_

_He zipped out of the room to the sound of his mother hollering at him about "no super-speed in the house" and "not wanting to have to face another scrambled Fabergé egg disaster." Conner did not see fit to inquire about either protest._

_He stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Wally's ceiling with his hands linked at his chest, just over the bright red "S." The sleeping bag was too short for him; it only came up to his stomach. He was glad Wally hadn't asked him if he'd wanted a change of clothes. The solar suit, though made a bitter epidermis by its emblem, may as well have been a second skin for him._

_"Kid Flash?" he asked quietly._

_Wally stirred in his bed, mumbling. "Mmmyep?"_

_Conner blinked, hard, once._

_"Do you think I'm…" He swallowed, considering his words and frowning deeply. His head hurt. He heard, with finely-tuned clarity that only exacerbated the bulging pain in his temples, the sheets rustle and the bed creak as Wally shifted. "Bad?"_

_"Bad?" Wally replied immediately. His reaction time had been comically short back then. "Whaddya mean bad?"_

_"Do you think I'm—" Conner tried again, his brow furrowing further; he closed his eyes tightly to try to dispel the headache. "Well. I guess the thing is – Cadmus made me to destroy Superman. To destroy anything they told me to. That's what I am. A destroyer. Does that make me bad?"_

_Wally fell into an uncharacteristic spell of silence, moving around slightly again. Conner glanced at the bed out of the corner of his eye – Wally was sitting up, his hair sticking out in all directions, his blanket askew on his raised knees._

_"Well… you definitely have the capacity to go against your programming," he mused after a while. "I mean, after all, you saved us tonight. You did what you wanted to instead of what they told you to. If you can do that, then… I guess being bad or good would be up to you."_

_"Up to me?" Conner murmured pensively. He didn't like the sound of it. Independence, while enticing, was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered. "But – what if I make mistakes? What if I malfunction? Cadmus built me to be perfect. But if I can't follow my programming, then I never will be. That was the only thing that could keep me on track."_

_"Dude," Wally said quietly. "Cadmus is behind you now. They were just a bunch of creeps who tried to turn you into their obedient little pet; the only thing they care about is themselves. And their idea of perfect seems like a pretty nasty blueprint anyway. You were just made to be a cheap Superman knockoff—"_

_Conner bristled. "A cheap what? How dare you. I am—"_

_"Hey, lemme finish!" Wally insisted, in the first true show of sagacity and seriousness that Conner had encountered from him. "That's what you were made to be. That's not what you are. Nobody knows what you are now, buddy; not even me and definitely not you. You're just… gonna have to put one foot in front of the other and decide who _and_ what you are. Good, bad; they're just two sides of the same coin with a whole lotta gray area in between. I know that's not how coins work, but bear with me; I just got a bunch of my DNA aggressively sucked out of me and it is _way_ past my bedtime, I mean, not that I care about that; I usually stay up until five playing Minecraft anyway, but don't tell my parents; they, uh, have yet to bond with Minecraft and I'm pretty sure my dad legitimately thinks I stay up all night mining for gold somehow; I'm really hungry – where was I?"_

_"Um…" Conner said blankly, a bit shell-shocked by the rapid-fire nature of the tangent._

_"Oh. Right. You being a good guy." Wally settled, his speech dwindling down to a comprehensible speed. "Supey. Listen. You don't have to comply to what you were built for. It's like Kaldur said – follow your own path and all that junk. You're – ugh, what's the word—" He snapped his fingers. "Autonomous now!" He paused. "Did I use that right?"_

_"Autonomy," Conner stated automatically. "The right or condition of self-government. A self-governing country or region. Freedom from external control or influence; independence. In Kantian moral philosophy, the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than—"_

_"Yeah yeah yeah," Wally interrupted him hastily. "Never thought I'd say _this_, but – slow down. I get the picture. And, uh, hopefully you do, too?"_

_Conner shrugged. He didn't, exactly – but, at the same time, he did. He wasn't entirely sure what it was that he wanted to hear, nor was he sure why he was, at the time, convinced that Wally would know. Wally was a hyperactive ball of freckles and uneven teeth and blurring gestures; he would know nothing except, perhaps, why the sun was so bright, or why the ocean went on forever, or why the grass turned green in the spring._

_Conner couldn't wait to see grass._

_"Supey," Wally said with soft insistence. "Listen to me. It doesn't matter what anyone else tries to make you. You're only as good or as bad as you make _yourself_."_

_Something in Conner's stomach fluttered._

_"And from what I've seen?" Wally continued. "You're already on-track."_

_"In a good way?" Conner asked unsurely, tapping his thumbs together._

_"Yeah," Wally replied. "Definitely."_

_The corners of Conner's mouth twitched slightly and he realized that he was smiling. It made his whole face feel lighter and warmer and frighteningly out of control._

_"Okay," he muttered, rolling over. "Thanks, Kid Flash."_

_Wally yawned. "Hey, call me Wally."_

_Conner blinked. "But I thought your name was—"_

_"That's my _alias_, dummy," Wally said with a snort. "My real name's Wally. Wally West. Yeah, yeah, I know; worst name in the history of ever, but…"_

_"No, I like it," Conner declared with a simple nod. "I like it a lot."_

_Wally's grateful smile was very nearly audible._

_"Thanks, buddy," he mumbled sleepily, and before Conner could answer, he was asleep again, snoring softly and splayed out in a ravel of sheets, muttering intermittently about formulas Conner had heard the G-Gnomes whisper at him._

_After a while, Conner, unable to withstand the vulnerable sensation of being laid out on the floor, stood and slipped into the closet, shuffling from one foot to the other and dozing off at last. He dreamed about skies so blue and wide and limitless that he lost himself in them, but he didn't have any desire to look down at where he'd flown from._

_Wally was cheering for him, thousands of miles down._

* * *

"Here's the deal, West," Roy grits out. "Aqualad decided to saddle _me_ with the chore of getting you reacquainted with combat before returning to the Team, so—"

"What!" Wally yelps indignantly. This had _so_ not been in the text, but his automatic need to prove Roy wrong overshadows the sheer absurdity of his current situation. "I don't need to get reacquainted; I can fight fine! See?"

He proceeds to swing his fist at Roy's face and miss by several inches. Roy stares at him, stoically unimpressed.

"Sorry, I think I missed it," he deadpans.

Wally groans loudly, slackening back so that his entire chest is practically aimed skyward. It's a balmy night in Star City, every constellation twinkling with cloudless clarity, every car whirring languidly by below them.

He shoots a wounded glare to Roy, who is facing him down with crossed arms and a quiver stuffed with arrows. A breeze skitters past them, rustling Wally's hair. _Why is it always rooftops with these people?_

"Okay," he begrudgingly admits. "So maybe getting sucked into an alternate dimension for a year can throw off my aim a little. Why are _you_ in charge of this?"

"Because Dinah can only handle so many bad pick-up lines," Roy retorts right away. "And it's extra-weird when you do it nowadays, because she's practically your aunt-in-law."

"Dude, shut up!" Wally barks, flushing at the ears. "I haven't said anything even _remotely_ sleazy to her in, like, six years."

"Seven," Roy reminds him with a soft frown. "It's seven now, Wally."

"Seven," Wally corrects himself, glancing down at his feet. "Same thing."

Roy clears his throat in the silence, but it does nothing to erase it. Wally tugs lightly at an elbow bunch in the mustard-colored Kevlar and whistles out a breath.

"Y'know," he says. "In retrospect, I really should've seen this coming when you decided to include the condition of 'suiting up' in your text offering a tearful reunion."

"I didn't offer anything even close to that," Roy grumbles. "I said, 'meet me on the roof of Queen Industries at nine and suit up'; what part of that includes tearful reunion? Or a reunion at all? Or, in fact, _tears_? What do you take me for?"

"Uh, a good friend." Wally pouts, feigning offendedness. "Guess I had you pegged wrong."

"Oh, _please_," Roy groans at the sky above before shaking his head. "You're dead for _one_ year and you expect everyone to be weeping over you. Not on your life, West. All right, so we're going to start with some basic—"

"Whoa, whoa, back up!" Wally insists, throwing his hands up. "Can we, like, retrace our progress here? _Why_is this even a thing that's happening, again?"

"Gee," Roy replies with burbling sarcasm. "Maybe because wanting to hop on back into the Junior Justice League after a leave of absence everyone thought would be permanent isn't gonna be as easy as tying your sneakers. Or maybe it's just because Kaldur always wants to play everything on the _safe_ side."

"Right," Wally bandies back with equal sardonicism. "Because leaving me for solo training with _you_ is _definitely_ the safe side."

Roy snorts. "Touché." He pauses. "Or… maybe I just wanted a little quality time with an old reanimated friend."

Wally rolls his eyes to conceal the twinge of sentimentality in his chest. "I'm _not_ reanimated; I told you, I was just in an alternate dimension and—"

"Spare me," Roy orders him, putting up a hand that immediately silences him – Wally supposes that a year of fathering practice has taught him some of the secrets of the trade. "The point is – we've got some catching up to do." He smirks. "After I get done teaching you a few lessons about hand-to-hand combat. Or has your time back with Artemis already started you off down that track?"

Wally frowns at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Roy, to his credit, looks slightly remorseful.

"Just, uh…" He scratches his head. "She – took it hard. _Really_ hard. Jade's been telling me about it, y'know. She kept the Tigress persona because it was… easier for her to cope that way, I guess. Did you hear about the revenge rampage she went on against Luthor? Not that I'm complaining, but… I don't think any of us thought she had _that_ in her."

Wally blinks at him, astounded. Frankly, the very idea of Artemis taking _anything_ hard is enough to make everything inside of him clench up and go unpleasantly cold.

"The what?" he asks weakly. "Luthor?"

Roy pulls an arrow out and fiddles with the tip, inspecting it closely. Wally is sure that it's nothing more than a distraction.

"Well, yeah; she tried to kill him when she found out he knew about the last MFD," he explains. Wally's eyes widen, but Roy doesn't provide him with enough pause to inquire about it. "I don't know how Kaldur didn't see it coming. She was laughing morality and team-playing in the face the second she put that Tigress mask on again." He chuckles slightly. "Honestly? These past few months have been the most I've ever liked her."

Wally knows that he's kidding, but he can feel his own face darken and his fists curl.

"That's not funny," he says coldly.

Roy shrugs. "Yeah, I know. Worth a shot." His eyes finally flick to Wally's and he breathes out shortly through his nose, his mouth thinning thoughtfully. "Wally, listen…"

Wally folds his arms and pointedly looks away. Roy is unfazed.

"Just… let her know you're not going to give up on her," he continues. "I know it must seem strange, but that's all she really cares about right now. Getting rid of Tigress once and for all is impossible at this point, but – locking her away until further notice is going to take a combined effort. She needs you more than you know."

Wally wants to laugh at the thought of Artemis needing _him_. Not derisively, exactly; mostly with pleasant amusement, because the suggestion that someone as infallibly strong and self-reliant and autonomous as Artemis would ever need a clown like him has never seemed anything but either outlandish or downright hilarious to him, even after several years.

He must have let out a snort, because Roy's forehead tightens and he glowers at him.

"Stop," he says sharply, startling Wally into quiet. "I'm not kidding. That day in the Arctic – she kept crying until M'gann finally put her to sleep in the bioship. She barely made it through the memorial. If you _laugh_ at her one more time, I'll break your neck."

"I'm—" Wally suddenly feels very small. "That's not why I – I mean; I just… I'm… I'm sorry."

It feels as though he has said those two words so frequently over the last two weeks that they have managed to lose all perspicuity. Still, though, they pour wholeheartedly out of him.

Roy's shoulders loosen. "Whatever. Just – be there for her. Or I will _not_ hesitate to cause you untraceable bodily harm. I've got Oliver Queen on my side, West, and do you know who's on Oliver Queen's side? The police. The hospitals."

"Good; I'll just make sure not to swing by Star City the next time I make her cry," Wally says.

Roy narrows his eyes. "Smart decision. But it won't save you."

Wally huffs, kicking at a rock among the gravel rooftop. The zephyr is back again, skirting over his skin.

"So." He clears his throat. "How're we gonna do this?"

Roy doesn't visibly or audibly react, but he puts the arrow he'd been tinkering with back in its place.

"We'll start with the basics. Hit me," he says simply.

Wally stares. "Hit what?"

"Me," Roy repeats. "Go for it. I won't bite."

Wally blinks at him unsurely for a moment before shifting his feet apart, digging the balls of them into the gravel and raising his fists. Roy is tapping his foot impatiently, and frankly, any show of _impatience_ in his presence has always made Wally particularly annoyed, so he lunges swiftly.

His fist doesn't even graze Roy's nose. He grits his teeth and proceeds to back up several paces.

"Trying to give yourself a running start?" Roy smirks. "This'll be fun."

Wally rolls his eyes and positions himself properly, making sure that his fists are at the ready. He takes a quick breath and speeds back toward Roy with every intention of simply tackling him to the ground.

To his shock, the attempt leaves him winded in an instant, and within two steps, there's a sting jolting through his every limb, the same sensation he'd felt sprinting circles around the chrysalis. It practically blinds him. He has just enough time to trip to a clumsy halt a few feet in front of Roy before a swift and unforgiving wave of dizziness descends on him, leaving him shaking and sick.

He buckles over, bracing his hands on his knees. Everything sways in his peripheral, causing his stomach to squirm and start to churn.

"You okay?" Roy asks, already stepping cautiously toward him.

"Fine," Wally gasps, blinking tears of pain out of his eyes. "Just, uh… whoa. Just dying."

He feels Roy's hand grasp his shoulder and hoist him back up. He sways a little, blinking hard at the way the top of the building spins and tilts around him. Roy's other palm flattens against his back, steadying him.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Roy asks dryly without holding up a hand.

"Pi," Wally mumbles faintly. "Here, just – just gimme a second."

Roy releases him and steps back, but still hovers attentively beside him. Wally swallows down the unsteady nausea crawling up his throat and counts to ten. The world lurches back into stillness.

"Okay," he says, his voice still trembling. "Best two out of three?"

"No," Roy grunts. "What's the matter with you?"

Wally tries to slow his shallow breathing and shudders. The phantom burning subsides.

"I dunno," he replies. "Guess, uh… I still might be fried from a year's worth of running."

"Haven't you used your speed at _all_ since you got back?" Roy asks with raised eyebrows.

Wally shrugs.

"Not really," he mutters, and it's true – outside of using it to beat Artemis to the door the previous week, he hadn't had any desire whatsoever to utilize his powers. It hadn't felt right to do it, to speed past everyone else who he'd left standing still for a year too long.

"Well, you're probably just out of shape, then," Roy declares. "Almost dying can do that to people, I hear."

"It's…" Wally straightens, scratching his head. "It's not just that. That – that _hurt_. A lot."

Roy frowns dubiously at him, with a sort of paternal worry that Wally knows all too well.

"Maybe you should talk to Canary," he suggests quietly. "There could be – I don't know, psychological ramifications."

Wally stares at him.

"Psychological what?" He scoffs, but it's weak. "No way. I'm fine. Just out of practice."

It's a lie. His bones are still buzzing with discomfort, seconds from going numb, and there's a sharp twinging in the back of his chest, and if he closes his eyes, all he sees is a vast expanse of white, and all he hears is Barry shouting his name.

"Bull." Wally looks sharply up to find Roy scowling down at him. "Look, kid; just because your mind is convinced nothing happened doesn't mean your body agrees with it. Besides, one of Canary's therapy bonanzas might do you some good anyway; I heard you haven't even talked to the Flash since you got back, and I'm no mind-reader, but that seems a little _weird_ for you."

"It's not like I can help it!" Wally snaps. "He's not answering his cell, or his home phone, or his _door_, or his private emergency-only League feed. It's like I'm dead to him, or something."

Roy sends him a deadpan look that stretches on for several seconds. It speaks volumes. Wally huffs.

"Yeah, fine, so maybe I technically am," he mutters. "Or have been. Or whatever. Look, can we just go back to reinstating me to the Team? First thing's first."

"Excuse me?" Roy's eyes widen with a mixture of shock and anger. "First thing's _first_? Your mentor can't look you in the eye because of his guilt and your girlfriend's gone off the deep end and the first thing you want to get done is rejoining the _Team_?" He lowers his voice to a whisper. "_Christ_."

"Sorry!" Wally yells, but the volume makes his temples throb, so he quiets. "_Sorry_. I just need… I need to be back in there. The whole retirement thing just kinda hurts now. I'll get to Barry and Artemis when they get to me."

Roy examines him pensively, seeming to inwardly debate something with great heatedness, before slackening his shoulders and exhaling.

"Fair enough," he mutters, and then he turns away, beckoning Wally along with a flick of his wrist. "Come on. There's a gym three blocks away that Ollie owns. Stupidly easy to break into. We can start there."

"Fine," Wally concedes. He pulls his goggles down over his eyes, though he knows he doesn't need them. Seeing the world reduced to a kaleidoscope of heat signatures and night vision silhouettes quantifies the facial expressions and postures that have kept him awake in the dark, and it incidentally keeps him from throwing his head back and screaming.

* * *

_M'gann sincerely hoped for two things. One, that Red Tornado could not understand obscene Martian expletives arranged in incredibly creative ways. Two, that the Cave did not have a network of hyper-reactive fire sprinklers installed in it._

_The universe afforded her neither._

_She pushed her sodden hair out of her face in mortification and only half-listened to Red Tornado's matter-of-fact lecture on why foul language was not permitted under Mount Justice's roof, no matter the dialect. She chewed her lip and nodded until her head felt empty and Red Tornado ordered her to make sure to clean up her mess before he pivoted around and marched mechanically out._

_After a few moments to calm herself, to keep herself from starting to cry messily from mortification, M'gann turned to face the ruined expanse of the kitchen dejectedly._

_"Whoa!"_

_She jumped at the sound of a voice from somewhere beyond the fridge. It was still a little smoky over the countertops, so it was difficult to discern much else except a silhouette._

_"Wally?" she called uncertainly._

_Sure enough, as soon as his name was spoken, Wally sped up to her from the other side of the kitchen, causing the smoke behind him to blow out in all directions and temporarily leave a Wally-shaped hole in the middle of the haze. M'gann stiffened slightly, startled by how close he suddenly was (or, well; he wasn't _that_ close; perhaps a foot or two away). He was beaming at her as though there was no one else on Earth he wanted to see more._

_"Hey, beautiful," he greeted her with waggling eyebrows. "What happened? Did my theory about you being so hot you set fire to everything around you finally come true?"_

_M'gann cocked her head. "I… I don't think so. I just burned some cookies. Or, well, the oven did."_

_Wally shrugged. "Sure, sure, Megalicious. Your secret's safe with me."_

_M'gann laughed a little to herself. She liked Wally. She liked the way his mind was a network of popping gold sparks and speeding trails of scarlet. She liked how much he made her smile._

_"Why did you call me that?" she asked him after a moment._

_He blinked, glancing over at her with protuberant eyes._

_"Call you what?" He stiffened. "Oh no, did I offend you or something; I—"_

_"No, no; you didn't!" she insisted with a wave of her hand. "It's just…"_

_She glanced down meekly and tucked some hair behind her ear. Wally watched the motion with flattering concentration._

_"You called me beautiful," she said softly. "Did you… mean that?"_

_Wally gawked at her, his hands going slack in his pockets._

_"What? Of course I did – Megs, of _course_," he exclaimed in blatant bewilderment. "You're gorgeous!" His cheeks immediately flushed. "I-I mean… I think you are. Uh."_

_M'gann's lips twitched. More than she liked Wally, more than she liked how much he made her laugh, she liked it when he would forget to act like Kid Flash and start acting like the giddy and bashful boy she knew from her accidental slips in telepathy. She liked his heartfelt incoherence._

_She looked down at her hands, at the green fingers and the peculiar fingerprints she'd painstakingly created for herself. It had been a long time since she had examined herself only to see spindly white limbs and a fearsome face. She knew that Wally only truly saw what she showed him, but it did not discount the fact that she had grown up being told she was repulsive, horrifying, inferior, worthless, disgusting. Her eyes began to swim and her frail human heart to flutter._

_"Megan?" he asked with a crack in his voice, cautiously stepping just slightly closer and hovering his hand at her shoulder. "Are you okay?"_

_M'gann bit her lip for courage before lunging forward and hugging him, loosely, gratefully, smiling through the trickling webs going down her cheeks. He froze completely, but she could hear his heart drumming frantically in his chest, and she could sense his mind scrambling around for cogency._

_"Thank you," she whispered._

_"What, uh…" he finally squeaked, patting her hesitantly on the back. "What'd I do?"_

_M'gann sniffled and drew away, slipping her hand down to gently clasp his fingers. He stared wondrously at her, the tips of his ears flushed bright pink._

_She shrugged and beamed shakily, wiping the wetness from her eyes with the heel of her palm._

_"No one's ever said that to me before," she told him. "Never. It's just – it was nice to hear. Even if it's not really true."_

_"What?!" he shouted. M'gann gave a start, leaning slightly back – he sounded _angry_. He was frowning at her with great offense in his bright eyes. She opened her mouth to splutter out a defense, but he continued over her with alacrity. "Well, they're a bunch of idiots. I know you probably think I'm a goof, but I – I think you're really pretty. I'll tell you every day if I have to."_

_"Oh – you don't," M'gann insisted softly, feeling her cheeks warm. But Wally shook his head._

_"I'm gonna," he declared. She had laughed indulgently at the time, touched by what she'd been certain then were words for show, but he had been true to his word._

_Dick would roll his eyes whenever Wally would drop a blatant compliment on M'gann's unsuspecting head and Conner would look especially disgruntled – later, Artemis would appear nothing short of furious. And he started to quiet as the months went by, as it became clear that Conner told her all the things she needed to hear and Artemis aggressively wished that Wally's uncharacteristically focused attention would shift to her. But M'gann knew – she knew the sincerity of Wally's blustering, insufferable theatrics, and she knew the candor that swam underneath his pretenses, and she locked every undue "beautiful" and "gorgeous" and "perfect" and "amazing" away inside of her heart to keep it comfortably chilled in the swollen and confusing heat of Earth._

_After she revealed her true form, after she forced herself to look away from the flabbergasted expressions on Artemis's and Wally's faces, after the mission in Santa Prisca had come to an end and the terrified beat of her mind had stilled and she was calming herself by baking a batch of cupcakes at three in the morning, Wally came to the kitchen to see her._

_He cleared his throat and she didn't jump. She turned smoothly to face him, wiping the flour from her hands off on her apron and smiling. His face was smeared with dirt and he was still in his stealth suit, and she could tell from his mental presence that his bruises were bothering him._

_"You're here late," she commented. "Weren't you going to walk Artemis home?"_

_"Uh—" His cheeks went pink, but he was smiling to himself. "She's… waiting by the zeta tubes." M'gann softened – the sentence, and his tone, spoke volumes that made it difficult for her to subdue how pleased she was for him. "I just wanted to tell you something."_

_"Okay." She beamed, but couldn't conceal her puzzled expression when she tilted her head. "What?"_

_Wally rubbed the back of his neck and glanced up to meet her eye. His grin was easygoing and loose._

_"I haven't said it in a while and I'm sorry," he told her. "You've been really brave today; I know that you know, but whatever. Just wanted to remind you you're still gorgeous." He put his hands up. "No ulterior motives! No sleaze! Just – really, M'gann. Knowing what your true form is… doesn't change any of what I've said to you these past few months. I thought I should clear that up."_

_M'gann, her shoulders shaking with indescribable gratitude, could think of no words to convey her thanks. Instead, she unfurled her mind and brushed it against his and his smile widened immediately, a one thousand-watt ray of warmth and promise._

_"No problem," he whispered, and then saluted her, backing out. "Artemis is _so_ gonna kill me for keeping her waiting, so, uh – I gotta dash. See you later, Megs."_

_He zipped out, leaving behind a gust of wind that sent her hair billowing out behind her. She raised a hand to wave at the empty kitchen and realized that she was sniffling, but that her cheeks were lifted by her beaming, tear-framed mouth._

_"Later, Wally," she whispered. The timer beside her dinged._

* * *

Artemis blows her hair out of her face and scowls up at the burbling fountain, folding her arms over her chest. The woman facing her chuckles at the pose, leaning back in her bright green armchair.

"You can laugh all you want," Artemis mutters, "but I _still_ say that the most ridiculous thing about this situation is that the League has an exact replica of the Cave's therapy room in the _Watchtower_."

"Mmm," Dinah hums pensively. "It was more the other way around. The League had it first. Green Lantern hired some aircraft company to design the thing; explains the choice in furniture color, I guess."

Artemis expels a breath through her nose that could barely pass for a laugh. She pulls her legs up and tucks her feet under her, leaning one elbow on the armrest and gazing down at the floor, toying absentmindedly with the end of her ponytail. Dinah watches her with her impeccable effect of analytical love, crossing one leg over the other. Her jacket lies open on the chair behind her. The water rustles along the wall.

"So," Dinah finally says. "It's been a while."

Artemis sighs shakily (which she supposes is a good thing).

"Uh, yeah," she agrees. "How's League life?"

Dinah shrugs, one side of her mouth quirked up.

"Surprisingly not very exciting," she replies. "After the Reach was sent off to stand trial in front of the Guardians of the Universe, the League's biggest responsibility was being on Oa to ensure it all ended the way it needed to." Her face darkens. "And believe me, there were… _plenty_ of attempts to make sure it didn't."

"Figures."

"Outside of that, though…" Dinah shrugs. "And the usual grab-bag of supervillain global domination schemes… we've been sort of off the radar. Nowhere near as high-profile as the Team's been these last few months."

Artemis can't help snorting, her eyes straying to her hands.

"Nice segué," she says. "Subtle."

Dinah shrugs unreadably. "Just an observation."

Artemis scoffs. Dinah blinks expectantly at her for a moment, but, when she doesn't respond, continues.

"Artemis, Kaldur's told me in detail about the mission you and the Team undertook to sabotage Lex Luthor's Reach drink manufacturing floor," she says. "He – well, along with the international news – informed me that you made an attempt on Luthor's life. Not that I'm complaining, but…" She gesticulates with genuine, but subdued, curiosity. "Why?"

Artemis exhales, sinking further back into the chair. She has to resist the temptation to bring her knees up and knock them together, her best shot at a barrier between her and honesty when she'd first sat down in a room just like this one, clenching her arm until it went numb. It's different now, talking to Dinah – the compulsion to lock her secrets aggressively within herself, away from all discerning eyes, is no longer as prevalent, nor is her pride or her shame, and there's a pervading sense that whatever she says while seated in this chair will have no echoes in her everyday life, no meaning outside of the silent glances Dinah sends her when she's having a bad day.

She feigns nonchalance, raising and dropping her shoulders.

"I guess there's – two ways I can say this," she replies coolly. "The first being…"

She shifts.

"The Team has been dealing with threats and trouble from Lex Luthor – from the Light – ever since the first day I joined it. Probably even before. _Weirdly_ enough, it's only recently started occurring to me that we can easily get rid of that problem by just… getting rid of _them_. So… that's the first answer. I was taking one for the team." Her lips quirk. "Literally _and_ figuratively."

Dinah gives a generous chuckle, but continues watching her with rapt attention.

"And the second is…" Artemis hears her own voice grow colder, heavier, even though she hadn't planned on it. "Well. Good old Lex _knew_ about the last MFD. The one that, uh… that Wally… dealt with. Apparently he was hoping that the… effort it would take for Flash and Bart to shut it down would be enough to stop it, but would still kill them, but then Wally had to come blasting in to take the fall. Anyway." She simpers. "I guess you could say that didn't _sit well_ with me."

Dinah scratches her head lightly, her piercing and sobering gaze meeting Artemis's.

"Revenge isn't exactly an agenda the League has room for," she says. "_Or_ the Team."

Artemis bows her head. "I know. And I know about the whole no 'I' in team; all for one, one for all crap – I learned it all a long time ago."

A feeling flutters through her, a sort of dissonant nostalgia paired with sheer panic, and it elicits a tremor of a smile from her, and it makes the backs of her eyes start to prickle.

"I'm sure you did," Dinah murmurs gently. "But if that's the case, then… why go on this rampage at all?"

Artemis chews her lip, toying with her fingers in her lap. Dinah is one of the few people who can reduce her to a self-conscious clam in under three seconds – it's no doubt the inflection that dangles at the ends of her questions, the beseeching but firm tone that is both a promise of understanding and a reminder of the inescapable.

"This—" She breaks herself off and shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. Part of her doesn't even want to come close to saying, or to even discussing, what she's about to – what she's been steeling herself to for days. "This is gonna sound crazy."

"That's my specialty," Dinah jokes wryly. Artemis glances up to see that Dinah's eyebrow is cocked and she's smirking, and something inside of her slackens just slightly with ease. "Blow me away."

"The thing is," Artemis says after a while, after several languid ticks of building up the courage to speak with such honesty at all, "It wasn't… _me_ who did those things. It was Tigress."

Dinah looks puzzled, but not alarmingly so. "I'm not sure I follow."

Artemis breathes in deeply for steadiness.

"I'm not sure I do either, honestly," she says as lightly as she can. "But… okay. Crash course. On the undercover mission – the one Dick and Kaldur set up – Tigress was my alias." She can't keep her eyes anywhere near Dinah's, so she settles for looking at her knees instead – at a particularly interesting tear forming at the right knee of her jeans. "Artemis Crock's… ghost, basically. The leftovers. While I was undercover, I couldn't afford to be Artemis. Ever. I had to be Tigress. And after the whole Wally _thing _happened, there wasn't—I mean, Tigress didn't go away."

"She never had the time to," Dinah comments softly.

Artemis frowns, but doesn't look up.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's simple," Dinah says, sitting forward and crossing one leg over the other, linking her hands at her knee. "After the mission was over, you couldn't get rid of that part of you all on your own. Wally was going to be your link back to being your old identity again, but after he left you so suddenly, you had no one to help bridge the gap, so you just decided not to cross it at all."

"Uh." Artemis blinks, admittedly stunned by how quickly Dinah had pegged the situation. "Yeah. Maybe."

She rests her fingers on her temple, propping her head up as she leans on the armrest again.

"I was all ready to just throw in the towel on the whole Tigress thing once the mission was over. Like it would be _easy_. That's how I kept myself going on the sub; I just kept trying to convince myself that Tigress was just a front, that she didn't matter, but I… guess she was more real than I thought. Or wanted. And I know it's pathetic—" She sneers. "But after Wally ceased, there wasn't any point in letting Artemis run around as a hero, because she was Wally's partner, and I wasn't…"

Her voice breaks. "Being Artemis just didn't appeal to me, without him around. I wasn't ready to be… a solo act." She snorts in mocking of herself, but all that comes out is a very obvious sniffling noise. "Pretty ironic, huh, considering my _roots_."

"Not at all." Dinah shakes her head briskly.

"Anyway, it all worked out," Artemis continues bitterly. "Tigress was still waiting in the wings, no dust or rust on her – so she was my, uh… coping mechanism, I guess? To use the kind of lingo I _know_ you like."

Dinah rolls her eyes, but fondly.

"And then I found out he was still alive." Artemis's throat feels like it's closing up. "And I knew that if – if _Artemis_ had to deal with something like that, she'd _want_ to go all the way, but she wouldn't have what it took. But Tigress would, because Tigress… doesn't really feel anything, except anger, sometimes, but she's good at mowing everyone else down and shutting everyone else out and that was – what I needed. That was the only thing that could _work_. And if—" She swallows, uncertain of whether she should speak the words lurking at the back of her tongue or not; the internal debate only lasts maybe a second. "If there were a few casualties on the way… risk of the job."

"Artemis, you still are, and will be, held accountable for what you've done," Dinah tells her firmly, but there's a comprehension in her eyes that cushions the blow of her words. "How do you propose this be addressed? Who should be punished? You… or Tigress?"

Artemis looks to the ceiling and tosses her hands helplessly in the air before dropping them to her lap again.

"Probably me," she admits. "For creating her." She quiets. "For… being a coward. Using her to run away. Look – it's not like I can never forgive myself, or anything, because I wasn't myself when that all happened."

"All?" Dinah repeats, her eyebrows stitching together. "What do you mean, _all_? Is there something you're not telling me?"

Artemis's mind stumbles back to the guards at LexCorp who, on both of her visits there, had been on the receiving end of one of her arrows. It does not stay there for long.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Dick covered it up on the League and Team files," she mutters. "During the fight, I – I think I might've killed a couple of guys. Or at least seriously hurt them." The memory of the second siege ends in darkness and a swollen-feeling head and is not at all pleasant. "Guess now I'll be thrown in jail, huh, for breaking the League Code of Honor?"

She can't help sounding snide on the last bit. It's all she really has. To her shock, however, Dinah does not react with fury or coldness – instead, she leans back in the chair, puts one hand to her mouth in apparently quite deep thought, and sighs, long and quiet, before speaking again.

"Were you provoked?" she asks matter-of-factly. "Was this self-defense, Artemis? This is important."

Artemis doesn't have to refresh her memory.

"Well, yeah," she replies. "They were attacking us for breaking into the plant; they had _guns_. The only ones I – I know for sure I killed were… these two guys at LexCorp when I…" She grimaces. "BrokeintherewithJade; it doesn't matter. One of them was about to shoot her. The other one jumped at_me_ after I took care of his buddy. I guess by the League's protocol, it's not really that justifiable, but for Tigress, it was. It was business."

Dinah stares at her in dumbstruck awe, clenching one of her fists.

"That's fair," she murmurs. "Sometimes it – it does happen. But Artemis, this isn't just something you can walk away from; you've… _killed_."

Artemis has to laugh at that one. She has to. She throws her head back and barks out what has to be the harshest and sourest laugh she's ever created or heard.

"Please," she finally retorts, jerking her chin back down. "I've done it before. I started when I was _twelve_, Dinah. That was what my dad did for me every year for my birthday – drop me in the middle of some warehouse or abandoned factory with whatever mark he was too lazy to kill by himself. 'Survive the next three hours, baby girl, and I'll get you a cupcake.' And there's only one way to survive those guys, trust me, and it's to make sure that they don't survive _you_."

She rolls her eyes and tightens her jaw. "But what am I telling you this for? You've probably got it all in a file."

Dinah sighs. "In my defense, it's been a few years since I've had to look at yours."

"The point is," Artemis says, "Casualties are unavoidable. The others might be all goody-two-shoes, don't-kill-anyone-ever, we'll-just-be-stooping-to-their-level-and-we-have- a-code, but I'm not. I was never _allowed_ to be. If I hadn't taken down that one, he probably would've killed my sister. And yeah – I would've gotten Luthor if Bart hadn't thrown off my aim. And you know what the worst part is? Not that I went for it. That I'm not really torn up over it. I didn't know them. I didn't like them. And they tried to kill me, and my sister, and my teammates, just by policy." She shakes her head vehemently at nothing. "Look, it was all for the greater good, or whatever, right? Cheshire and I only stole Luthor's stupid little trinket so I could bring back Wally, who's worth more than any combo of Luthor's goons put together—"

"Artemis," Dinah interrupts her. "No one is more valuable than anyone else. That's not your call. Those are still _lives_ that you took. How can you possibly rationalize that for yourself?"

"Because I wasn't there," Artemis snaps. "Tigress was. _Tigress_ dealt with the problem, not me; she was on autopilot."

"It's not that easy," Dinah says immediately. There's a slight indentation between her pinched eyebrows.

"I know it's not!" Artemis half-shouts, but when Dinah draws back slightly, she makes an effort to even her tone. "But the… the thing I'm most worried about isn't that. It's that maybe Tigress has been around for so long now that I can't ever switch her off. No matter how hard I try to go back to being myself, I'll never be able to shake her. She has the power to come out without my permission now. And she'll wind up hurting people I actually _care_ about." She whispers the last part so quietly that she hopes Dinah doesn't hear it: "People like Wally."

Dinah tilts her head meditatively and Artemis grimaces, knowing that she absolutely _had_ heard it.

"What was that tone?" she asks. "Has something already happened?"

Artemis ekes out a shrug, busying herself with stretching her arms over her head immediately afterwards.

"Yeah, I kind of, uh… well, _Tigress_, I guess, jumped him. Thought I could keep a lid on her for one night and the next thing I know I'm holding a knife to his throat without even noticing."

She drops her arms again, sighing deeply with the motion, but keeping her eyes on the ceiling, resting her lolling head on the back of the chair.

"And now, of _course_, he's not talking to me." She sneers. "Whatever. I can't blame him, I guess. At least he was honest about it."

"Honest?" Dinah presses her.

"He said I'm… messed-up," Artemis expounds with a stiff smile, a clear contrast to the venom coursing through her every syllable. "So things aren't exactly hearts and roses right now, or anything. Not like I thought they would be. Guess it was only a matter of time until he finally figured how much of a broken bird I am anyway."

"Artemis, you're no more broken than the rest of us," Dinah murmurs with fierce sincerity – the same she had used when Artemis was fifteen and scared, when she had been the first to reassure an uncertain black sheep that her family did not matter. "And as much as it pains me to say it, yes, you're right: fatalities are sometimes unavoidable. But they should only occur when there are _no other options_." She regards Artemis solemnly. "You have to understand. No matter how much faith the Team has in _you_, they can't have faith in your Tigress persona. Before you get back on the Team – before you can try to tackle this whole Wally situation – before you even _think_ about going any further with _anything_, you need to get rid of her. It's non-negotiable."

"Yeah, Dinah, I gathered that," Artemis retaliates, giving her a withering look. "You got any suggestions in that department, by any chance?"

"That's going to mostly be on you," Dinah says. "I'll be in your corner to help in any way I can. One thing I _will_ recommend, though? Start by getting rid of the costume."

Artemis's brow furrows. "But—"

"No buts," Dinah cuts her off emphatically, putting up a silencing hand. "The costume is the most tangible part of your Tigress identity. If you don't have that anymore, you won't be able to see her when you look in the mirror."

"Right," Artemis mutters. "I'll just be running around in a costume I don't know anymore. Great idea."

Dinah shrugs. "Think what you want. What have you got to lose by throwing it out?"

"I…" Artemis hems and haws for a few seconds, pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to ease the ache growing in her sinuses. "Look. Tigress is screwed up and twisted and murderous, yeah. But she's who I've been for the past, what, year and a half? I can't just switch her off."

"Why not?" Dinah demands. "You switched Artemis off when you went undercover, didn't you?"

Artemis opens her mouth to fire off a retort, but the words die in her throat. The chair beneath her suddenly feels much less stiff. She blows a breath out against the backs of her teeth.

"Yeah," she concedes unsurely. "I guess I did."

"Artemis," Dinah tells her, and Artemis can tell, by the way she inclines her head and leans forward and links her hands together, by the clement evenness of her voice, that this is important, "You're still in there. You're still _you_. I know that, the Team knows that, your mother knows that. The only person who doesn't seem to know is you. And that's all right. You've been through more than any of us can imagine, and you've coped with it accordingly. But choosing to pursue Wally not as Artemis, but as Tigress, should show you something very clearly. In giving up your own identity to save the life of someone you cared about, you were doing something selfless. In allowing yourself to become someone you feared, someone you _hated_, just so you could give your all to bringing Wally home… you were…" She smiles slightly, and rolls her wrist pensively. "Noble. You're not the first hero _or_ heroine to have an identity crisis, to lose your footing a little along the way. And your Team – your _friends_ – they'll be waiting for you. They believe in you just as much as they always have, or they wouldn't have stuck it out with you for as long as they have – as they always _will_. I know that the idea of _family_ has never really sat with you; I _do_ – but listen to me. You have one now. You've had one for seven years. And they love you. Every part of you. Even the darker ones. _Always_. That's what families do. Whether you decide to face the road ahead as Artemis or Tigress is up to you, but your _family_ will wait for Artemis to come into her own again, however long it takes, however hard they have to work to let you know that it's safe to let Tigress go. You're strong, Artemis. You always have been. You can get through this if you're brave enough to let go of your mask and let your friends help you fix things. And it's not you that needs fixing. It's not. You'll know what to fix when you get to it, but for now… Just stop doubting yourself. Trust yourself to be able to come back from this."

Her smile, for a moment, fades in favor of a graver expression, and Artemis, through the inexplicable and long-forgotten warmth swaying inside of her every pore, gulps and pays attention.

"In the meantime," Dinah finishes. "You could lay off the knee-jerk revenge sprees. I mean it."

"That's…" Artemis's voice is much hoarser, much higher, much more unabashedly hopeful (an emotion she hasn't dared to let herself feel in what seems like decades), than she wants it to be. "That's it? I just – I just get a slap on the wrist and I'm good?"

"A slap on the wrist and two more weeks' suspension," Dinah replies. "And… a little something from Batman."

Artemis frowns, puzzled, and starts to inquire into the statement, but before she can, Dinah has reached into the pocket of her rumpled jacket and produced an envelope, passing it across to Artemis.

Artemis takes it hesitantly, blinking at the names written on the front in frank, black capitals: _Crock, Artemis. West, Wallace. For recovery purposes._

"I don't understand," she whispers.

Dinah nods to her. "Open them."

Artemis blinks back something and does as she's told, tearing the fold off gently. She nudges it open and peers inside, pulling out its contents – two slender slips of paper – and when she registers what they are, a lump starts to form in her throat.

"For whenever you need them," Dinah explains, heartfelt and fond. "Provided it's not during the holiday rush."

Artemis quickly and expertly dashes a stray trickle from the corner of her right eye and folds her lips in to keep herself in check, closing the envelope up again and placing it carefully in her purse. When she looks back to Dinah, she's smiling the way she hasn't let herself in months, with all of the certainty and conviction of a brighter-eyed young girl with a bow and too much to prove.

"As long as one of these is for a window seat," she says, holding up the envelope, "I think I might be able to handle this whole 'getting better' thing."


	16. Chapter 16

**THIS IS THE END. HOLD YOUR BREATH AND COUNT TO TEN.**

**Okay, for real, though. I'm saving the big emotional closing monologue for the last actual update, which will be a short epilogue to be posted June 20 (as a final middle finger to Mr. Greg Weisman). But you guys should all know right off the bat that, in the simplest terms, I could not have done any of this without you.**

**Because this is the final chapter, it's a mega-update. 13,300 words. It's a little hectic and a little emotional but it's a conclusion, and conclusions tend to be that way. Enormous ginormous gargantuan thanks to Libby, again and again, for being my cheerleader since the beginning – SHE MADE ME A MIX TO MOTIVATE ME AND IT GOT ME THROUGH THIS LAST STRETCH; AND SHE BETA'D THIS CHAPTER; IS SHE NOT THE BEST OF THE BEST? I volunteer to be founder of the Church of Libberoni. And also, thanks to everybody who sent me messages of support and investment as I powered through this very crazy, very trying home stretch. It was hard, bringing this to a close. Mostly because I'm not really ready to be done with this fic yet; like, what am I gonna do with myself now?**

**Ah well. Closing messages later. For now… hope you all enjoy.**

* * *

"_Uncle Barry, Uncle Barry!" Wally hollered elatedly, sprinting blurry circles around the grass field at the center of the brand-new Keystone High School track. "Looklooklook; I got faster!"_

"_So you did, kid," Barry replied with a warm smile. He braced his hands on his hips, breathing out long and open-mouthed to watch the way it fogged up in the midnight air. "Have you been practicing your stops like I asked?"_

"_Huh? Oh, yeah! Watch!"_

_Wally fired off in the direction of the east end of the field, his bright red hoodie making a fizzling streak behind him. Barry watched, hiding his amused exasperation, as Wally attempted to dig his heels into a full stop but instead, as he was wont to do, fell prey to his own vaulting speed and skidded for several feet. He lost his footing and the force sent him rolling along the grass with a barrage of loud "oof"s._

_Barry jogged over to him immediately, and by the time he reached him, Wally was already on his feet again, rubbing at his elbow and wincing._

"_That could have gone better," he said._

"_A little." Barry snorted. "What've I told you about having to decelerate three seconds before you want to stop?"_

"_It's not fair!" Wally whined, stamping his foot. Barry blinked down at him – his voice was cracking with puberty, and the growth spurt that had begun recently was still causing his gangly body to shoot up, and there was an explosion of new freckles splattered across nearly every crevice of his still youth-rounded face. "You can stop on a dime whenever you feel like it; I wanna do it the way _you_ do it!"_

"_Well, right now, you can't," Barry told him as gently as he could. "Your powers aren't the same as mine, for one thing, and for another, you're still a newbie. Baby steps, kid."_

"_Uh, why would somebody with super speed need to take baby steps?" Wally wrinkled his nose and folded his rangy arms. As he bared his teeth in frustration, his braces showed. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. This is _dumb_! When do we get to fight crime?"_

"_When I'm confident you're not gonna get yourself killed," Barry retorted, and when Wally groaned loudly (because they were words he had already heard a hundred times, and would hear a hundred more). "Listen to me, Wally; my first concern here is that you're safe. You've already dealt me a huge blow there, since you nearly blew up giving yourself this ability in the first place, but this isn't all fun and games, all right? You make superpowers for yourself, you'd better be ready to shoulder the responsibility that comes with them."_

"_Responsibility?" Wally exclaimed. "Come onnnn, Uncle Barry! My responsibility is to the people who need my help, not to me!"_

"_And what are those people gonna do if you're not around, huh?" Barry demanded harshly. Wally winced and went quiet, looking dejected, and Barry exhaled shortly through his nose, slumping. "I'm sorry, kid; I don't mean to snap at you."_

"_Then why do you keep doing it?" Wally mumbled, scowling churlishly aside._

"_I heard that," Barry sighed. Wally grimaced comically. "Ah, don't mind me. Guess I'm just an old man who's worrying about his nephew. It's just… you're my responsibility now; and—" He huffed, hesitating for thought. "D'you know what the word 'protegé' means in French?"_

_Wally shook his head. "Do you seriously think I would?"_

_Barry chuckled. "Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, it means… protected. Protected one. If you're my protegé, then it's… it's my duty to protect you."_

_Wally stuck out his tongue with a huge, derisive roll of his eyes. "I don't need protecting, Uncle Barry. I'm thirteen years old."_

_Barry rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Sure. Big tough guy." He shook his head, and then he looked Wally in the eye with a lopsided smile. "You wanna hear a secret?"_

_Wally immediately brightened, nodding enthusiastically. "Heck yeah!"_

_Barry hummed out a breath and put both of his hands on Wally's shoulders, putting on his most serious visage. Wally stared back up at him, straightening under the sobriety of the gesture. _

"_Truth be told, Wall-man, you scare me to death," Barry said quietly. "Yeah, you may be a newbie, and you may be young, but you're already running so fast I can barely keep up with you, and – sometimes I worry that, one day… I won't be able to keep pace. I won't be able to always have you in my peripheral, make sure you're okay. And that scares me more than seeing you in that hospital bed because of your little science project did. Scares me more than any of the bad guys I've fought has." He swallowed something back, expertly matching how close he had come to plummeting off the brink of composure and into tears. Still, though, his voice felt like it had snagged on something nasty and sharp. "Scares me more than anything in the world."_

_Wally was silent for a few seconds, his expression unreadable, but after a short time, he spoke._

"_Wall-man?" he repeated reverently, testing out the nickname. His face split into a toothy, braces-studded grin. "I like that."_

"_It's 'cause you're the man." Barry grinned, clapping him on the shoulder, inwardly thinking with wryness that of course that was the only thing he got out of the lecture. "I'm serious, kid. Having the powers you have is… a gift, but you're just – you're too young to really understand what I mean, but you will someday, when you're older."_

"_Jeeeeesus," Wally drawled out, dropping his head back. "Did you seriously just say that to me? You are nowhere _near_ as cool as I thought you were when I was seven."_

"_Shot through the heart," Barry exclaimed, clutching his chest in mock agony. "Ease up, Wally. And… humor your embarrassing uncle a little and do what he says. In exchange, I'll, uh, buy you a hot dog for every sign of improvement. Reinforces the training."_

"_I'm not a dog, Uncle Barry," Wally scoffed. "But that's a sweet deal; I'm in."_

_He lifted one sideways fist and Barry, grinning, dropped his own on top of it, then under it, and then knuckles-to-knuckles against it before popping it back in unison with Wally, opening his palm, and making an explosion noise._

"_So!" Wally said in a bracing voice, his arms going jauntily akimbo as he surveyed the dark field. "Since we've only got, uh, one more hour before my bedtime, what should we do first?" He beamed up at Barry, throwing his fists in the air. "Time to show me what these crazy powers can really do!"_

_Barry laughed, softly, shaking his head at the ebulliently naïve boy before him._

"_Kid," he said in earnest, "I don't even know where to start."_

* * *

The red tarmac of Keystone High's track had been worn down to a sun-bleached terra cotta shade in the ten years since Wally's toes had first carried him across it, but, to its credit, it still has the same blinding, exhilarating atmosphere at sunrise that it always has. Wally's feet pound down on it now as he rounds a corner, keeping himself at a manageable and human pace, numbing the inner agony at traveling so slowly.

The high school is practically a ghost town in the mornings, and the fact that it's summer guarantees Wally privacy, just in case, however unlikely, he winds up feeling the old need for speed. It's bright and empty, especially in the early cracks of morning, all white skies and the promise of unbearable humidity.

He has the music turned up loud so that it can shove back the thoughts that have been perpetuating his consciousness for the past week, growing louder and more clamorous, more ready to riot, with every second he does not address them: Dick's broken excuse for a voice, his mother dropping the egg, Bart tearfully roaring himself raw, Conner's embracing arms seconds away from accidentally snapping his spine.

His foot slams down, leading the other, sending rhythmic jolts of sensation up his strained calves. He keeps his eyes on the path in front of him, his teeth clenched together. It had been his idea to try to reacquaint himself with movement gradually by jogging laps at an ordinary pace, and Roy, who doesn't much care about what he does as long as it works, had endorsed it fully.

He goes around another corner, now on the home stretch (for the sixteenth time that morning). It's been less than a month since he'd fumbled his way back into his old life, and still every day has felt like an eerie cage built around him, forbidding him from accessing anything beyond the bars of his own perception. His mother has only begun to keep from crying at the mere sight or sound of him in the past few days, and his father is finally able to speak to him without losing his composure a few syllables in.

It's fair enough, he supposes, in a way. At least _someone's_ talking to him.

The song drops off into a close when he's not expecting it, and, coupled with the bitterness of his thoughts, it gives enough of an opening in the back of his brain for a single image to spike through: Artemis, naked, staring in broken fury at him after he'd shouted the wrong words.

He loses his footing and trips.

The fall is unnecessarily damaging for the angle at which he takes it, but maybe it's because he makes no effort to brace or block himself. He hits the tarmac knee-first, then elbow, and skids violently until the gravelly surface tears open the skin on his kneecap and he shouts.

In a rushing and entirely unwelcome instant, he feels like a clumsy kid again, a map of scattered scabs and bruises and twisted ankles, a sunburned nose and too much to prove. When he comes to a stop, the earbuds now yanked from him, instead of standing, he grits his teeth and claps his palms over the bleeding scrape and shamefully allows tears to spring into his eyes.

He doesn't hear the footsteps. He only has time to half-open his eyes before the black sneakers in his line of vision are introduced by an exhausted, familiar voice.

"Looks like a nasty one, kid. You need a Band-Aid?"

He snaps to attention, rolling slightly over to better survey his new company. His heart stutters and stumbles its way down the rundles of his now-clamped ribs.

It's Barry. He's wearing a weathered gray Blue Valley College sweatshirt, and there are bags under his eyes, which look red around the edges, though from exhaustion or emotion, Wally can't discern. The dark and swollen lines seem to accompany his ashen pallor well.

Wally's stomach curdles – he looks years older, years more tired, years more beaten down. He can't bring himself to get to his feet, so he just half-lies on the ground and gawks up at his uncle, unable to trawl up any words.

Barry's eyes go to his feet and his mouth spasms.

"Kid," he rasps in a voice far more splintered and enervated than the one Wally knows, than the one that had jovially woken him up on Christmas mornings, "I… don't even know where to start."

Wally gulps, and that seems to lurch him into articulation again.

"You could… maybe start by helping me up?" he suggests, extending a hand. Barry makes an odd face, but takes it, hauling him up.

He lets go of Wally far too quickly when it becomes clear that he has his balance back. Wally's first instinct is to hug him, clap him heartily on the back and crack a joke, met with indulgent chuckles and a noogie that he would still be tragically unable to outgrow. He knows, though, that his instincts fail him now, in this brave new world of walking on eggshells and waiting to hear what everyone wants him to say, so he stays still, cramming his hands into the pouch of his hoodie to keep them busy.

"I'm so sorry for not calling," Barry croaks, focused on Wally's elbow as though that's what he has to give apologies to. "Or answering. I just… needed some time."

"Totally cool," Wally murmurs, and for all the flippancy of the statement, it's earnest. "I missed you."

Barry snorts, but it sounds more to Wally like the stifled beginning of a wrenched-out sob.

"You?" Barry repeats disbelievingly. "Missed _me_? That's… a good one."

"I did," Wally insists. "How – I mean, are things okay? Did you…"

Barry seems to know what his question is, answering it as his voice trails off.

"Twins, just like Bart said," he mutters, running a hand over his face. "Boy and a girl. Born on Halloween, the little suckers. We named them Dawn and… and Don."

Wally has to bite his lip to reel in a highly inappropriate laugh. "Uh, sorry; you – named them both the same thing?"

"No, no," Barry replies with a quirk of his mouth. "Dawn's the girl – like the time of day. Don's the boy – like a Corleone."

Wally can't help the noise of amusement at that, or maybe it's just the delight at the fact that he now has twin cousins to match the hyperactive one from the future: finally, a dash of normalcy.

"The both of 'em are precocious as all get-out," Barry says with pride. "Already had their first steps by the time they were seven months old. Iris was ready to explode, let me tell you."

"First words yet?" Wally asks excitedly.

"Oh, heck yeah!" Barry laughs. "Don's was 'mama,' naturally – he's got a preference. Dawn's was 'Barry'; guess she's gonna grow up to be just like her mom, since she hasn't stopped using it."

Wally grins. "The real question here is, why haven't I met them yet?"

At that, the easy and free smile on Barry's face lowers and fades, and Wally remembers, in a crashing moment, the exact context of this reunion.

"Jeez," Barry whispers, his eyebrows twitching towards each other sorrowfully. "It's like you were never even gone."

"If it helps, I literally feel like I never was, so you're not alone," Wally jokes, but when Barry's increasingly despondent expression doesn't change, he pedals back the jocularity. "Barry, I—"

"That's bleeding," Barry interrupts, pointing to Wally's knee wound. Wally clamps his mouth shut and glances down to find that, indeed, there are rivulets of red snaking down the line of his tibia.

"Perfect," he deadpans, but waves a dismissive hand. "Whatever; it's not like I'm not used to getting—uh."

He breaks off when Barry whips out a large, square Band-Aid and a compact bottle of hydrogen peroxide from his hoodie pocket and kneels immediately down to tend to the scrape.

"Man, I remember when this kind of stuff would make you cry a river," Barry muses, dousing a cotton ball in the peroxide (_where the hell had _that _come from?_) and dabbing it on Wally's knee. "You've come a long way."

"I think I deserve a medal, to be hone—ohhhh _ow ow ow_." Wally winces and hisses as the peroxide fizzles on the open wound, stinging him down to the bone. "Okay. Strike that. I was a smart kid to hate this."

"Suck it up," Barry orders, expertly placing the Band-Aid over the area of grievance and briskly putting the bottle back in the depths of his sweatshirt.

He tosses the swab into the garbage can on the other side of the track before facing Wally again. As is typical of seemingly _everyone_ who has looked at Wally since he'd come back, Barry's whole posture immediately slackens and his face grows grief-stricken.

Wally shifts awkwardly, but doesn't break the precious eye contact he has.

"I'm… glad you've been doing okay," he mumbles.

Barry huffs out a breath that seems like a hollowed-out husk of laughter. His eyes are now downcast, causing Wally's stomach to pinch.

"It's taken… a long time," Barry admits hoarsely. "If it hadn't been for Iris and the kids, and Bart, I'd… I'd've thrown in the towel."

Wally's eyes widen. "You'd've _what_? What for?!"

Barry's jaw clenches and Wally can see a muscle twitch under his ear. When his eyes return to Wally's, they've darkened in a way that makes Wally feel uneasy and, inexplicably, apologetic to the point of guilty illness in his gut.

"I couldn't stand being out there, knowing what I'd done," Barry says sharply. His voice calms, but it is tragic now instead of strong. "Knowing that I… hadn't saved you."

Wally softens, his brow furrowing.

"You… Barry, what are you talking about?" he inquires. "It wasn't your fault."

"Give me a break," Barry barks so suddenly that it startles Wally into jumping slightly. "If I'd slowed down more, if I'd taken some of the hits for you – if I hadn't given you all that crap about pushing yourself, taking risks, not being afraid…" He makes a pitiful choking noise, and Wally feels torn to shreds at the sight of the man he knows by heart as strong and infallible and composed crumbling into disjointed pieces right in front of him. "You would never have…"

"Do I actually have to tell you this?" Wally exclaims in bewilderment. "_I_ was the one who made the decision to help you. _I_ was the one who got myself ceased because I wasn't fast enough; you didn't have anything to do with it!"

"Stop it," Barry orders him, throwing one hand out. "Stop with that 'not fast enough' noise, Kid; I don't ever wanna hear you dumping on yourself again; you hear me? Bart and I could've slowed down; we could've _helped_ you! And all we did was keep running, leave you in the dust. All I did was stick my hand out, like that'd haul you back. I _let_ that happen to you. I let you…"

His voice seems to fail him, and he brings a fist up to cover his mouth, his face contorting with reopened pain.

"I was supposed to protect you," he croaks. "From the start, that was my job, and I just let that chrysalis energy eat you up. Until you were gone. Until you had to tell me who to say good-bye to."

Wally's mind, against his will, jettisons itself into the raging blizzard and lightning storm again, the desperate thoughts engulfing his burning brain that echoed his mother's Thanksgiving dinners, his father steadying his aim for the tee-ball, Artemis rolling over to greet him in the morning and laughing, unbridled, until her nose scrunched up. Barry, shouting for him to come home; Bart, small limbs pumping, watching him vanish from the world insides-first. The lightning had torn its way across his skin until he was sure it would dissolve his bones, and still he had smiled, and joked, to mask the pounding and childlike fear in his chest, of not wanting to die, not wanting to black out, wanting his mother to hold his hand and tell him not to be afraid.

"It wasn't your choice, Barry; it was mine," he says presently, pulling him out of the frost-encrusted memory. "I'm sorry you had to see it. I'm sorry you had to be there. But I was doing what you taught me to do – putting other people before myself, knowing that I was prepared to save the world no matter what it wound up costing me."

There's a miniscule part of him, frail and frightened, that prods at his heart and whispers, _No endgame that doesn't ensure that Artemis still alive and breathing and carrying the potential to smile and survive, like a kicking, screaming streak of sunlight hurtling toward Earth, is permitted._

Barry's demeanor has not changed drastically, but there's a staggering sadness in his eyes like none Wally can even try to comprehend.

"But if I'd—" he starts to say.

Wally cuts him off.

"Are you serious?" he asks faintly. "You… you _blamed_ yourself? For what _I_ did, what _I_ sacrificed? Barry, I – just – I knew what I was doing. What could _happen_. And I just… if it went south, I wanted to know that it could at least… go south with _you_ there to make me feel like, well, at least I was trying, and effort is half the victory, or whatever it was you used to tell me."

Barry's shoulders are jerking and Wally simultaneously cannot bring himself to believe that he's making his uncle cry, and, for the first time in his life, that he does not feel like someone juvenile and unwise when facing the man before him, but rather an adult shoved down by the world, who had seen all of the dark corners and forgotten pits and marched on with a light head and a heavy heart.

"God," Barry whimpers, a noise that makes Wally's heart split down the middle. "_God_, Wally; you're – when the Team got you back, I couldn't even think of what to say to you, how to handle it. I'm sorry for not talking to you, but it—" He scoffs unstably to himself, wiping his nose with his knuckles. "Probably would've, uh, y'know, destroyed me. At the time. Wanted to avoid that bit."

At that precise moment, Wally decides that eggshells are much better stomped on anyway, and he steps forward and cuffs Barry in a hug, clenching his arms around him as fiercely and diligently as he can.

Barry grips him back and ragged, tattered noises rack themselves out of him, tearing holes in the open air, and Wally ignores how the tightness exacerbates his bruises from last night's hand-to-hand session with Roy; he holds Barry and marvels at the fact that they are now the same height, that Barry no longer seems like a pillar of knowledge and wisdom, but rather a companion to lead him through the door to those things.

"Iris is gonna lose it when she sees you again," Barry chokes out after a long, long time. "You think I'm bad? Oy. Just wait. When I told her you were alive, I… I had to hold her up."

Wally laughs slightly, drawing away. Barry's hands rest on his shoulders, and the damp streaks trickling down his cheeks frame his upturned mouth, which seems to be finally pressing color into his cheeks.

"We can work on that later," Wally says quietly. "Right now… you wanna go for a run with me?"

Barry blinks down at him, swiping away the leaking tears.

"Where to?" he asks in a hushed voice.

Wally turns away from him, throwing his arms out. The wind sprints its way across his open, sun-splashed face and he grins up at it. The part he has not told Barry yet, the part he has not told anyone except Roy, who has grasped his shoulder with supportiveness whenever a newfound speed sickness has caused him to vomit onto whatever unfortunate surface is closest to him when he makes himself stop, is that the electricity and the sprinting and the year spent in stationary transit had filled his bones with lightning that carries him at just slightly faster and braver speeds – none so extreme as to cause any enormous difference, but truthfully, he has come to enjoy it: being the underdog, the one who will, sooner or later, run out of breath; the one who will always still be learning, just as he will always still be teaching.

"Anywhere," he says.

* * *

"_You're in love with her," Zatanna declared with a clap of her hands and a triumphant point of one slender finger at the tip of Wally's nose. It made him go cross-eyed, and leaning away nearly resulted in him toppling off the stool in the Cave's kitchen._

"_Am not," he insisted in what had to be the worst lie he had ever told. Zatanna threw her head back and laughed, a sound so fresh and blue with clarity that it seemed to spark the quiet air around them into rapt attention._

"_So are," she retorted, pointing to him again, grinning with wicked victory. "Look, I don't blame you, buddy; she's amazing; everyone knows that. But, okay, I think this is the part where I say that if you hurt her I'll turn you into a rabbit and then make an exquisite stew with you, but honestly, it's Artemis; I don't think she needs me to defend her."_

"_Uh," Wally spluttered, hardly able to keep up with her. "Y…es…?"_

_Zatanna huffed, turning back to opening the bottle of grape soda. It was the first time in what felt like a long time that Wally had seen her traipsing around in something that was not her father's old t-shirt and a pair of Charmander pajama pants; her wine-red sweater and leggings and bare feet suited her far more than the moping, heartbreaking ensembles that had hung off of her arms for the past month and a half._

"_Magnifique," Zatanna declared. The bottle cap came off with a pop._

"_Hey, uh, Zee – you still on for dinner with my folks this Saturday?" Wally asked in a clumsy but hopefully effective way of steering the conversation away from the fact that she had caught him staring, lovelorn and intent, at Artemis at least a dozen times in the last two days alone._

_Zatanna quieted slightly, almost imperceptibly, opening the cabinet under the sink to dispose of the bottle cap. When she straightened up again, taking a chug of her soda, she turned to face him with the smallest of smiles on her face, her free hand toying with a loose thread at the hem of her sweater._

"_Well, duh, you loser; you really think I'd leave you out in the cold?" she teased him, just before settling into a stool opposite him and clasping the bottle between her palms. "No, sir. My daddy taught me better. So, so, so. Back to you being in love with Artemis."_

"_You're unbelievable," Wally exclaimed, but not without a tincture of fondness._

_Zatanna shrugged, taking another swig out of the bottle._

"_I'm magical, baby," she said airily. "Part of the job description."_

_Wally rested his elbows on the surface of the marble island. To his surprise, he did not regret answering Zatanna's text of woe and loneliness with the offer of a visit in the slightest. And the nicest part of it all? Conner and M'gann had gone out for the day, so the Cave's sacred walls were, blessedly, free of thumping and moaning._

_Wally was glad of it, too. It was always awkward to have conversations with Zatanna when M'gann was moaning Conner's name three doors away from the kitchen._

"_I'm serious, West," Zatanna said, snapping her fingers and jolting him out of his (really gross, really unwelcome) thoughts. "Let's talk about sex, baby."_

"_I hate you," Wally moaned, dropping his forehead onto the table._

* * *

In Wally's defense, _West Side Story_ made it look really, really good.

He teeters precariously on the rusty, suspicious ladder of the fire escape of Artemis's apartment building, only just beginning to realize that the scorching sun overhead has made it impossible to keep a steady grip on the metal rungs. He's fairly certain that his trek up the thing is giving the back of his neck a sunburn – or that could just be because, for about the hundred and sixteenth time in his life, he had ignored his mother's warnings and left the house without putting on any sunscreen.

He sighs forlornly. At least whatever new freckles he gets out of this won't really make any visible difference.

It doesn't matter in the long run. It's taken him eighteen days to wrestle up the nerve to come and try to interact with her again, and he's _still_ too terrified to try taking the main and normal way up to her apartment for fear that she will deny him entry, so the point is, he has bigger problems.

He remembers which floor she's on, but there's something different about navigating building levels without actually being inside. Everything is indiscernible. He heaves himself up through the rectangular opening onto the grated platform and winces at how loudly it bangs and clangs.

He slinks forward to the window – and at least that's one odd in his favor, because he distinctly remembers Artemis's apartment having a window right over the fire escape – and pops his head up to look inside. He immediately loosens (and has to resist the urge to pat himself on the back) when he sees Brucely go galumphing by into the kitchen.

He wonders if Tony ever felt like the creepiest man on the planet when he was doing this.

Within a few seconds, Artemis has emerged from behind the kitchen partition and into his line of sight. His shoulders slacken dumbfoundedly – she's wearing nothing but a sports bra and a pair of athletic shorts.

He is absolutely, unequivocally done for.

Grimacing in advance, just in case these are his last moments on Earth, he tentatively raises his fist and knocks lightly on the glass.

The sharp gray eyes that always seem to cut him to the marrow have shot up to meet his in a breathless instant. Her whole posture changes – she bristles, and her brow furrows, but, to his indescribable relief, she doesn't look angry. Just incredibly sad.

Which isn't a great sign, either.

He jabs a hopeful, freckled finger at the lock and then clasps his hands beseechingly. Artemis straightens up and narrows her eyes dangerously at him, as though daring him to ask her again. He shrugs helplessly, joins his palms again, and throws his head back – and uses every inch of his stance to silently, visibly beg her.

He's prodded into opening them again when he hears a click and a heavy sliding sound. He jerks his chin down to stare, wide-eyed and overjoyed, at her; she watches him with something unreadable in her dark and lonely irises, her arms braced in the air on the now-raised lower sash of the window.

She's so close. He has to slam down on his internal brakes so fiercely that they squeal in his brain, and still it only half-stops him from instinctively leaning forward, his eyes drawn hungrily to the curve of her mouth, to the glaze of sweat on her muscles and her shoulders.

She jolts back, looking offended, and he, with nowhere to go, topples forward through the window. He lands face-down on the hardwood floor – _not_ recommended, he might add – as his legs kick blindly around above him.

"You need something?" Artemis asks, her voice a wave of coolness in the festering heat.

The sunset and the smog outside have dyed every wall of her apartment a deep, smoldering orange that only makes the pressure mounting in his head more stifling. His mind leaps back to a time when, in another apartment, in another summer, he had kissed her openly against the wall in the hallway, thrilled by the way the fiery light ignited on her skin.

He looks up. Now, she is taller and older and the fire is not only part of her flesh but part of the breath that comes out of her mouth, and he could slay a thousand dragons but she would still be the most fearsome beast he would ever encounter. If dragons were real.

He gets to his feet without stumbling.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out, and then immediately winces, slapping himself lightly in the face. "Wait; that was terrible. What I meant to say is…"

He changes tones, slows himself down, so he can pluck every syllable straight out of his heart and string them to her like Christmas lights.

"I'm so," he murmurs, "so sorry. For everything. For me. For not being there for you when you needed me; for—"

"It's fine," Artemis says serenely in a way that instantly worries him.

"Uh." He blinks, scratching at the back of his head as he stares her down, as he takes note of the few single strands of blonde wavering at her nose with each breath, the single bead of sweat pooling in the dip of her collarbone. "Is it?"

"Yeah." She nods briskly, her lips thinning and turning upwards in what he instantly recognizes as a pity smile. "But I'm… kinda busy, so…"

"I didn't mean what I said." He hurries through the words, because he's fully aware that she can, at any time, break both of his arms and throw him out the window without breaking a sweat. "And if it makes you feel any better I am probably going to regret saying it for the rest of my life. It was stupid and wrong and I – okay, listen."

He shifts from one foot to the other, like it's supposed to steel him. Artemis folds her arms, frowning neutrally, but doesn't object.

He takes a deep breath.

"You're not messed up," he tells her, and it feels odd to finally be saying them out loud, these words he's been constructing in his head for days and days, in the dark when he can't sleep, in the daylight when he can't think. "You're not. When I said you were messed up, I didn't mean… faulty, or defective, or… a burden, or anything. I meant you were – broken, the way you _shouldn't_ be, the way none of us should've _ever_ been, and I – I don't ever want to be something that makes that worse. And if I _am_, then all you have to do is say so and I'll leave if you want me to, because I want you to have the things you want and the things you need and if I'm not one of them it's – well, it's not _fine_, but I could deal, because I want you to be happy, and you deserve that more than ever now that you've had to deal with me being _dead_ for a year and I – I'm so, _so_ sorry I did that; I _am_, and I'm sorry for always being so stupid."

He can't look at her eyes anymore, at the way they don't seem to be changing. He gulps clumsily and shoves his eyes down to the floor, allowing his voice to tremble and crack.

"I just want you to be okay, because that's what you are and should be and anything I can do to get you to that point i'll _gladly_ take up. Even though I know you don't need _me_ to… get through life, or whatever; I mean, look at you. But I just… I'm sorry." He closes his eyes, his voice plunging into a ragged whisper. "I'm sorry, Artemis. For everything. Every apology I've ever needed to give you is – I'm giving it to you now. Even the ones you've gotten twice. I'm _sorry_. I'm sorry; I'm—"

_Tk-tk-tk-tk_.

He freezes, his brow furrowing instantly, his previously gesticulating hands poised, stagnant, in the air. Artemis is staring over his head, looking indescribably annoyed.

"What, uh…" he says, starting to turn.

"Duck," Artemis says about one second after Wally feels a form tackle violently into him from behind, somersault forward with him twice, and pin him to the floor.

He lets out a yell of indignation and _definitely not_ terror, writhing, and when he looks up to get a glimpse of his attacker, he immediately stiffens.

"Hi there," Jade, in full Cheshire attire, greets him in a chipper voice, waving at him. Her claws click together.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Wally shouts, which only seems to amuse Jade to the point of chuckling.

"Oh, don't get your cute little Flash boxers in a twist," she coos. "I was just in the neighborhood; thought I'd drop in and see how the healing process is going. And based on my calculations…" She glances up, no doubt at Artemis. "It's going just _fine_, which is good news for _you_."

She swiftly leans down until her mask is perhaps an inch or two from his face and her hair is cascading onto his shoulders. He glowers as murderously as he can, but it does nothing to faze her. He is, frankly, astounded (but really not) that Artemis has yet to intervene. He decides right then that if he ever manages to repair things with the love of his life, the _second_ repair he'll be making is one to the window, and it will involve installing padlocks, an alarm, an automated gun, and maybe a few of those laser things like in museums.

"Casual reminder, though, Mr. 'Ginger Disaster' – if you do _anything_ to screw this up in any way," Jade says sweetly, "you may find yourself missing a dick, of the non-acrobat variety. You look great, by the way. Have you been working out?"

"I am never going to react to you straddling me while trying to slit my throat this way again, so pay attention," Wally growls back. "Please… get… _off_."

"If I was _really_ supposed to get off, I think my sister would have yelled at me to do so by now," Jade retorts. "And she seems to be enjoying the show."

"Get off of him, Jade," Artemis groans flatly.

Jade's eyes flick up to meet hers under low eyelids, and Wally hears a sigh through the mask's filter before Jade rolls off of him, landing on her tiptoes in a poised crouch with her clawed fingers on her knees. As he scrambles up into a sitting position, she watches him intently, reminding him far too eerily of the creature on which her mask is based.

"Boo-_hoo_." She twists a fist at the corner of her eye mockingly. "You're no _fun_ now that he's back to tame you all over again, sis."

Artemis scoffs in obvious distaste and starts to open her mouth to retort, but Wally, frowning, interjects.

"I can't decide what's dumber," he snaps. "The fact that you think I'd be able to do that, or the fact that you think she'd _let_ me."

Jade laughs, long and light, throwing her head back. Her mane cascades savagely down her back.

"Ease up, Freckles." She snickers. "That was a test. You passed."

"Well, that's gratifying to hear; I'm gonna have to put it on the fridge," he shoots back with a scowl, but Jade fantastically ignores him, drawing herself to her full height.

"Be seeing you, sis," she says to Artemis with a wave. "You're both grossing me out, so I suppose that's a good sign. Don't forget to write! Except you, Flash Boy. Who _knows_ what kind of brain damage that whole ceasing thing gave you. Toodles."

She's backflipping out the window and down the fire escape before Wally even has the sense to raise his fist into the air and shake it at the space where she'd been standing. He flicks his middle finger at the empty spot, his face sour, before shaking his head and craning it back to stare at Artemis again.

She's standing behind him with her hands on her hips. One eyebrow is raised derisively down at him. His mouth thins.

"You gonna help me up?" he asks dryly, offering his hand.

She swats it away and scoffs before striding past him to close the window. He sighs hugely and heaves himself up, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet.

"You gonna forgive me?" he tries instead, clapping his palms together in an imploring gesture.

Artemis shoves the pane down and it thuds on the sill. She leaves her fingers on it and leans slightly on her arms. The thick, hot light from the sunset outside grazes her silhouette with fiery orange, and when she finally turns to face him, she's backlit by it as though standing in front of a blaze. One hand lingers on the windowsill, and the other rests against her thigh.

She shrugs.

"You're only half of the problem," she mutters. "Please leave."

Wally groans – it sounds halfway wounded and halfway exasperated – and throws his hands in the air, but relents. After a second, he loosens and steps toward the front door.

"Uh, I'm gonna go out the normal way, if that's cool," he says.

Artemis combs her hair back with her fingers. She blows out a long and heavy breath.

"That's cool," she says, defeated.

"You want my new number?" he offers hopefully. His heart feels like it's tightening and shrinking with every second he faces her down, every mounting moment that her eyes are zeroed in on him.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, resting her free hand on her hip.

"Uh…" Her open and ungainly hesitation tugs pleasantly at him – he's sure it's not something Tigress would leave lying around.

"Y'know, um, I'll let you think about it," he says hastily before she can make a decision (though whether it's out of genuine considerateness or the conviction that she'll reject him, he isn't really sure).

He jabs his thumb at the door and gesticulates vaguely, backing toward it, smiling like an idiot and groping at the air until his hand finally finds the doorknob. He pulls the door ajar and lets his gaze linger unabashedly on her figure, on the brazen curve of her exposed legs and the way the light ignites the fine hairs on her arms.

"See you when I see you," he says, expertly masking the thick bump the words press into the back of his throat.

"Yeah," she agrees quietly, nodding and folding her lips in and wiggling her fingers slightly at him in a wave.

He bobs his head a couple more times than is necessary – any excuse to further utilize the privilege of her company – before finally gulping and slipping out the door into the hallway. He closes it softly behind him and walks down the carpeted corridor with his hands in his pockets and tries to remember the texture of her heat-dried lips, tries to brand it onto the insides of his eyelids.

He apparently tries too hard, because he smashes headlong into the wall next to the elevator and falls back onto the floor.

* * *

Artemis watches the door close and lifts her arms up to link them under her chest, her hands grasping her elbows. The sound of the latch clicking back into place plucks at her stomach unpleasantly, but she sighs out through her nose and keeps her eyes on the floor. The remnants of Wally's presence – the humming vestiges hovering at her shoulders, the invisible footprints made of sunlight and motion – are like heat waves in the sunset-splashed air.

Her breaths are just a little shakier than she'd prefer, but she can hardly blame herself – it's been three weeks and still seeing Wally's face actively reacting to her words right in front of her has left her a combination of winded and disoriented. The broken photograph is propped up on the coffee table, facing the couch where she'd been sitting only a few days before, evaluating it ambiguously. Brucely is splayed out across the cushions, his legs askew in the air, his tongue lolling out. His snores are impossible to ignore.

She hears a sudden, languid tapping behind her and whirls around to find Jade perched outside the closed window again, waving coyly. She sets her jaw and shoves the pane up again, glowering murderously at her sister.

"But soft," Jade monotones. "What light through yonder window breaks?"

"What?!" Artemis barks.

Jade snickers.

"Tomorrow night; same place?" she asks casually. "You can bring your bow this time. I won't make fun of it even though it's a coward's wea—"

"Fine," Artemis snaps tetchily, grinding her teeth. "Now – go away before I come out there and kick you six stories down."

"That sounds fun!" Jade exclaims with comical perkiness. "Now I want to tr—"

Artemis slams the window closed for good before she can finish, sending Jade one more sour glare before turning away.

She slumps against the wall, sliding down to plop onto the floor. Brucely immediately trots over to her, licking gently at her face.

"The plot thickens, boy," she mutters, absentmindedly stroking his neck.

Every part of her is shouting petulantly at her to sprint out the door, to grab Wally by the collar and drag him back and kiss apologies into and out of him in the privacy of her sweltering, sheet-deprived bed, but she forces herself to stay in place, to stick with the promise she'd made to Dinah of saving the best for last.

She bites her lip. Training with Jade is going to be a _delight_, undoubtedly. Despite her mental sarcasm, however, and as bewildering as it is to her that Jade had offered to help her crime-fight her way out of the Tigress persona, she can't help the slow trickles of gratitude going down her spine and into her stomach, warming every inch of her.

She grips Brucely's jowls at either side and drops her forehead onto his, which makes him pant loudly and wag his tail.

"I'd better get dressed," she whispers, scratching him behind the ears once more before swinging up to her feet. "Big day."

Brucely chuffs in agreement and Artemis, in spite of herself, giggles.

She hopes, against logic, that Wally had stuck around long enough to somehow hear it.

* * *

_Kaldur could count on one hand the number of times in his life he had shed tears. He wondered if the present occasion should be given two fingers, perhaps three, for its weight – he was kneeling in front of the hologram of a girl he had grown with, fought with, loved with, learned with, and the tears to which he was so unaccustomed were tangling his skin in messy rivulets._

_The hologram was all wrong: Tula's hair hung, perfectly still, at her cheeks, nowhere near the serene wavering the water had danced it into. Her face has the smallest of smiles on it, so unlike the sunny grin that had ignited everything inside of him with exuberance and courage. He could not bring himself to reach toward her, to try fooling himself into thinking that perhaps his fingers would find something other than stale air._

_Footsteps echoed in the grotto from behind him and he did nothing to calm himself or change his posture. He curled further in on himself, his mouth quaking, his fists going white at the knuckles in his lap. The feet came to a quiet stop just beside him._

"_Kaldur," Wally murmured. His voice was hoarse and ungainly._

"_Please leave me be," Kaldur croaked. Sorrow wracked his voice without subtlety or shame._

"_I…" Wally's voice hitched on something. "I'm… I'm so sorry."_

_Kaldur wrenched his eyes closed. Wally had been the one to lead the mission squad, at his own suggestion. It was supposed to be a step up, a chance to prove himself. Instead it had ended in Tula's blue blood muddling the dirt and Garth's screams of grief shattering the stars, in Kaldur's fragmented heart being swept into himself and himself alone._

"_Do not be," Kaldur told him, and he meant it. "None of us… could have prevented it. These things, they… they are a necessary risk."_

"_Dude," Wally whispered, hunkering down. Kaldur felt an arm sling itself across the backs of his shoulders, felt fingers grasping his upper arm. "Don't give me that. It's okay to be angry."_

"_I am not," Kaldur assured him. It was true. "Not even at Ocean Master, truthfully."_

_Wally's voice darkened. "Yeah. I guess Garth had that covered."_

_Kaldur's mind flashed back to Garth's blind rage, to the spell that he had roared at Ocean Master with tears streaking his dirtied face, to the way the lightning had burned Prince Orm's entire body. _

"_I am merely…" Kaldur breathed in shakily. "Disillusioned."_

_Wally shifted so that he was sitting instead of crouching. He was barefoot – his callused toes dug into the dirt. He rubbed Kaldur's shoulder silently._

"_If there is anyone to blame for this," Kaldur rasped. "It is me. It is not the first time my poor leadership has dealt a blow to the Team."_

_Wally gripped him emphatically._

"_No, it's not," he insisted fiercely. "But people make mistakes, Kaldur. Tula's gone, but it's not your fault. It's Ocean Master's. And you wanna know the truth? You're the best thing to ever happen to us. To this Team. We'd be nothing without you."_

_He turned his head at the same time Kaldur turned his own, and his eyes were vehement and truthful in a way that, somewhat, made Kaldur's veins chill just slightly._

"_And we're all here for you," he finished in a hush. "This isn't just Garth's loss. It's yours, too."_

_Kaldur shook his head, looking away again._

"_Garth loved her," he whispered._

_Wally's voice softened. "So did you."_

_Kaldur's eyes snapped up to meet his, bewildered, but he could not draw up the strength to ask him how he knew. Despite this, Wally answered the unspoken question._

"_You think I don't know what it looks like?" he murmured. Kaldur's shoulders loosened at the recollection of how, on the bioship ride back, Wally had stood behind Artemis's chair with his arms ensnared at her clavicle and his face buried into her neck, and hadn't let go until they had landed._

"_We can't lose you, Kaldur," Wally told him. "We're done losing people."_

_Kaldur swallowed down the thick emotion bobbing up his chest and opened his mouth to reply, but his attention was caught by the sight of Dick coming down the hallway. He met Kaldur's eyes immediately, his mask tightening slightly around his hardened expression, and Kaldur's stomach sank with certainty._

_Wally noticed his distraction and turned his torso slightly to follow his line of vision. Kaldur didn't see his expression upon noticing his best friend, but they exchanged an imperceptible look and Wally's arm slackened around Kaldur's shoulders, and then he stood, brushing his jeans off._

"_Good-bye, my friend," Kaldur told him. "And thank you."_

_Wally looked puzzled at the choice in parting words, but he nodded quietly, patted Kaldur's back once more, glanced at Dick unreadably, and left._

_Kaldur stared at the lines on his palms and wondered when they had begun to look so labyrinthine._

* * *

She watches Kaldur read the note and is sure that her heart is about to spin out of her chest. She can't help wringing her hands, curling her lip in to bite it without showing her teeth, picking at her fingernails.

She keeps her eyes steadily, but not shamefully, on the floor. M'gann's slender feet are in front of her, between Kaldur's bare ones and Conner's combat boots, and Kaldur's are flanked on the right by Dick's. The stars seem brighter and the sky lighter and the Earth smoother, all a gentle harmony for the frantic tutting of her heart, the anticipation springing along her limbs.

Strange has returned to Rann, apparently, to visit someone named Alanna. Artemis has heard all of the gossip from M'gann, and between the snickers of amusement, she has regretted not being able to look him in the eye and shout out "thank you"s to him in every language she knows or could ever discover, but apparently Alanna's a looker, so she supposes he isn't completely miserable – and there will be other days.

After what feels like a long time, Kaldur sighs through his nose and folds the note up carefully, smoothing it in his hands.

"My friend," he says, and when she lifts her chin to look at him, relief floods her: he's smiling. "I cannot tell you how pleased I am to hear of Black Canary's endorsement."

M'gann lets out a squeak of joy and flings her arms around Conner's shoulders, and he beams and pats her in a way that only makes Artemis's rising cheeks lift themselves more broadly.

Dick cackles lightly, pride and excitement.

"Nice to have you back," he tells her, and Artemis's eyes swivel to his – the holes in the domino mask that had once held white lenses are now empty, proudly displaying the crinkled blue eyes.

"Nice to _be_ back," she replies easily. Dick's cheeks go pink with happiness.

"Though nothing would please me more than to celebrate this occasion," Kaldur says, "We have more pressing matters to attend to. Black Manta—"

Artemis's smile goes quiet and her stomach squeezes at the way something in the back of his eyes fractures.

"—Has been spotted convening with Ra's al-Ghul off the coast of Taipei," he finishes, and Artemis is sure that no one but her and M'gann had noticed the infinitesimal change in demeanor. "I am making it the Team's newest priority to investigate. We will be deploying in three days."

"Aye aye," Conner says with a small salute once M'gann disengages. When he looks to Artemis again, the rampant hope in his eyes beats its way through her every bone.

"I, uh…" Artemis says, gulping to keep her emotions in check. "I just want to… say to all of you that I, um – I'm really—"

"Ah, come on," Dick interrupts gently. His smile is like that of an older brother's. It throws Artemis off-balance in the most satisfying possible way. "We know."

"No." Artemis shakes her head, unable to keep down three tears that spurt out of her eyes. She looks at each of them in turn, drawing in a shaky breath. "You really don't."

Everyone looks at her with tender visages. The silence fills with comfort and understanding and this is such a nice change, she thinks, from the stale tension that has, for so long, filled the almost infinite walls of the mission room.

"So I dunno if you heard," Dick says coyly to Artemis, "but Wally's going to be joining our ranks again soon. Pretty exciting, huh?"

"Uh…" Artemis stammers, but she expertly tacks on a smile. "Yeah."

"Tigress," Kaldur asks uncertainly – Artemis has to fight not to show how startled she is to be addressed by the façade that is, for now, no more than the cobwebs hanging in the deepest and darkest parts of her. "I know it is soon, but – will you be suiting up with us?"

"No," Artemis replies straightaway. She waits for the rejection in Kaldur's face to set in before continuing. "Well… _Tigress_ won't be."

After a second (Artemis counts), Kaldur's eyes start to grow wider with realization and, as Artemis glances over his broad shoulder, she sees that M'gann is beaming at her with watery pride.

"Seriously, orange is a terrible color for me," she continues airily, spurred onwards by the ebullient grin on Dick's face, an expression of such joy and relief and pride that she hasn't seen since he was barely a teenager. "I feel like I'd look way better in… maybe green?"

Kaldur's whole face softens, and Artemis smiles silently back at him. She prays with everything in her that the look alone can convey to him her indebtedness, her love. Judging by the gratified spasm of his mouth as it transforms into a visage of uncharacteristically unrestrained happiness, it does a decent enough job.

Her eyes drift over to Conner, and she's thrown by the sheer joy in his expression, the loose and open light in his eyes.

"I think that'd look really good," he says, and then finishes, warmly, "Artemis."

As M'gann flies forward to embrace her, whispering over and over again that she's home, home, Artemis is finally home, Artemis thinks it would, too.

* * *

"Jade," Artemis whispers that night in Star City, after she lands silently on the rooftop onto which she and Jade have bounded, after she has pushed herself onto her feet to feel the summer soak its way onto her arms, left bare and open from the exposure of the costume she had first shot an arrow in.

"Oh, no," Jade immediately drawls without turning around. "You're not going to get all _sentimental_ on me, are you? Because, I'll be honest, I don't think regurgitating the fast food you just forced me to eat will be very utilitarian at this juncture of the evening."

"Too bad," Artemis retorts.

It's their last patrol together; Artemis knows. Jade is a few paces in front of her, facing away, her black hair twisting in the breeze like smoke. Artemis swallows, and it is the first time that seeing Jade from behind does not immediately rekindle memories of watching her pack her toothbrush, pull a baseball cap down over her young head, and slip out into the darkened roads of the unknown world.

"Thank you," Artemis tells her, pulling up every iota of gratefulness and compassion that she can, that she has never been allowed to give to Jade.

"For what?" Jade asks innocently.

Artemis shakes her head. "That's all I'm going to say. Don't worry."

Jade turns to her. To Artemis's ill-concealed astonishment, she reaches up to the chin of her mask, hooks her thumb under it, and pulls it completely off, resting it atop her charcoal mane. Her face, Artemis only notices right then, is different, and maybe it has been for a long time and she just hasn't observed the difference: it carries all of the deadly poise and unspoken loyalty of both a murderer and a mother.

Artemis snorts quietly to herself. Maybe they aren't as divergent as she had once thought they were.

"Good," Jade murmurs, winking. "Because I have a reputation to uphold. Don't forget… in this family, it's _still_ every girl for herself."

That's when Artemis knows that, after tonight, things will lurch back to the way they once were: she and Jade will have dinners on the weekends and try to fight each other to the death after dark, but there will be an unspoken comprehension between them now, a rustling memory of Artemis sleeping on a couch that smelled like the childhood she had lost the day Jade had lost herself, a recollection of Jade's arms around her for the first time in sixteen years.

Artemis opens her mouth, maybe to try to say something else, something more substantial, a fonder and more worthy farewell, but then, off in the distance, a gun fires twice and breaks the quavering silence in half. She and Jade whip their heads around in unison.

"Thank goodness," Jade exclaims. "That was starting to get _way_ too dangerous. Let's go do something a little safer, shall we?"

Artemis rolls her eyes and brushes her fingers against the collapsible bow on her belt to make sure it's still there. Satisfied, she tosses her ponytail over her shoulder and sprints after Jade through the nighttime, toward the sounds that she had, as a little girl, told herself were fireworks, to help herself fall asleep when they would pepper the night with noise.

The source of the gunshot is a warehouse downtown, and Jade, throwing all subtlety to the winds (no doubt due to the fact, Artemis thinks, that Lian is being watched over by Bart, and she has to make the evening's activities last for as short an amount of time as possible), vaults straight through one of the open, grimy windows.

Artemis follows. She somersaults and lands without a hitch on the concrete floor, and Jade, on a crate behind her, covers her as she whips out her bow, nocks an arrow, and surges to her feet, already aiming steadily.

She freezes in an instant, her blood spiking to a searing temperature, as her eyes lock onto the target.

"Well, well, well," Sportsmaster leers, turning his despicable body fully to face her. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Artemis stands, unable to move or fire, and stares down her father. In all honesty, she had forgotten about him in the wild, reckless scramble since encountering him on Manta's sub – he looks the same, just as burly and intimidating as he has all her life, his silver mask glinting in the moonlight. He's joined by a band of at least thirty men, all sporting various weaponry from machine guns to javelins, all sneering.

"Don't flatter yourself," Jade retorts, an immediate signal for Artemis to assess their surroundings while she stalls for evaluation time. "This cat doesn't _drag_ for you anymore, Lawrence."

"That's for sure," Sportsmaster replies. Artemis's eyes dart subtly around the compound – it's filled floor-to-ceiling with thick wooden crates, all labeled in a language that resembles Reachian. Something inside of her begins to chill. "So what's the occasion, then? Family reunion? Really, girls. You shouldn't have. But I won't complain."

His attention moves to Artemis, who immediately draws the arrow back tighter and bares her teeth at him.

"After all," he says, "It sounds to me like _both_ of my little ladies have been doing my side proud these days."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Artemis snarls. "As usual."

"Don't I, Artemis?" Sportsmaster retorts. "Or – oh, I'm sorry; do you go by Tigress now? Tell me, how hard is it to wash the blood off those paws of yours, sweetheart?"

Artemis growls and fires the arrow. He just barely dodges it. His eyes narrow dangerously behind the mask and he produces his trademark hammer ball, which clangs to the ground at the end of its thick black cord.

"Ah, lovely," Jade says from above. "The classic."

"You don't wanna fight me, little girl," Sportsmaster tells Artemis, cracking his neck. "Not even after all the brushing-up you've had to do for Manta and his clowns."

"Wow, Dad, once again, you are totally wrong," Artemis snaps, nocking another arrow with fluid perfection and aiming it straight for his heart. "There's nobody else on _Earth_ I'd rather take down."

"Suit yourself." Sportsmaster laughs, rough and threatening, and begins to twirl the ball, as his mooks all raise their weapons. "I hope my pals back there don't take away from this being a fair fight."

Artemis smirks. "Not at all."

"How cute," Sportsmaster comments, and then he lunges for her, swinging the ball, and she leaps out of the way. It smashes a crater into the concrete. "Let's make this interesting, boys. Fire on my signal."

"Chesh!" Artemis shouts, dodging another swing – she's seconds away from abandoning the bow entirely in favor of hand-to-hand attacks. "A little help?"

Jade sighs loudly with exasperation and Artemis opens her mouth to chastise her further, but there's no need – Jade plucks a sai from her belt and bounds down from the tower of boxes, sprinting on fleet feet into the middle of the mook herd. As Artemis backflips away from a particularly nasty assault of the hammer, she collapses her bow, hooks it back onto her belt, and stands poised with her feet apart and her fists raised.

Sportsmaster retracts the hammer from its point of impact and meets her eyes. She smirks, uncurling one hand and beckoning him coyly toward her.

Sportsmaster brays out a laugh, advancing predatorily. "You've grown a pair, baby girl; I'll give you that. But if all you're going to be doing is dodging my attacks, there's not really any point to this, so you'd better start making things interesting fast or my boys'll end this their way."

"You mean the coward's way?" a voice shouts from behind, startling Artemis into jumping. "Figures, Sportsy. Puh-_lease_."

"Hello, boys," Jade croons. "What brings you into this part of town on such a nice night?"

Artemis doesn't dare turn around to investigate, keeping her eyes trained on Sportsmaster for any sign of movement. He chuckles darkly, starting to twirl the hammer again.

"You brought backup," he sneers. "So much for growing a pair."

"We're following the sounds of disorder and unrest," a different voice barks back to Jade. "This is _my_city, after all. What are _you_ doing, taking decorating tips? When I said we should switch things up in the apartment, I didn't mean like this."

The telltale whisk and whistle of arrows being shot through the air erupts and echoes to the high ceiling.

"I don't know; it has a certain charm," Jade bandies back idly – Artemis hears the sounds of kicking, shouting, heads banging together and bodies falling to the floor. "Lighten up, Red. Or… Red 1."

"Why am I Red 2?" the other voice yelps, followed by whooshing sounds, pummeling fists, groans.

"I'm sorry; do you prefer the codename Ginger Disaster?"

Sportsmaster throws the hammer toward Artemis's shoulder and she darts out of the way, swiftly uppercutting him in the jaw in the interim. The steely curve of the bone sends a crack of pain through her knuckles, but the punch causes him to stumble back, disoriented enough for her to pivot around with a roundhouse kick that bowls him down to the floor.

She steps forward with a smug grin and presses the heel of her boot into his throat, blowing a few strands of hair out of her face.

"In case you still haven't figured it out, Dad," she says, panting slightly – more from adrenaline than strain, "This isn't the gym on Seventh Street."

Sportsmaster growls, sounding uncharacteristically taxed.

"No," he snarls, and then he abruptly and unforgivingly grabs Artemis's ankle.

Artemis gasps and tries to wrench out of his grasp, but to no avail – he yanks at her and violently throws her aside like she's nothing more than a bundle of sticks. She smashes into one of the crates with so much force that the wood snaps around her, driving splinters into the exposed skin of her back. Her bow detaches from her belt and skitters across the concrete.

The back of her skull slams into the contents, which she's only able to deduce are hard and wet, now gushing liquid onto the floor. White spots pound against the backs of her eyelids. She groans.

Sportsmaster's approaching footsteps echo, muffled, in her thumping ears. She manages to raise her head, fending off the dizziness from the impact, to bare her teeth at him, her hands fumbling for something, anything, she can use to incapacitate him. He's spinning the hammer so rapidly that it whistles in the air.

"You sure have grown, baby girl," he taunts her, drawing closer and closer. Artemis's scrambling hands find nothing. "Almost had me there. But let's face facts: you can't take me down no matter how many times you try." He draws his arm back, now only a foot in front of her, and Artemis does nothing, though she knows she could and should; she just watches him come toward her, watches the harrowing shadows in his eyes and wonders, dissonantly, if the same shadows have ever lurked in hers. "Your heart's just not in it. But I guess it makes sense. Your sorry excuse for a heart's not in anything at all."

"Uh, wrong!"

A streak of something distinctly yellow and scarlet jets across the floor and slams straight into Sportsmaster from the side, sending him flying several yards away, where he crashes to the floor in a heap.

Artemis swallows and stares as neutrally as she can up at her savior: Wally, in his Kid Flash uniform, standing over her with one hand half-extended to her. The flashes of the machine guns on the other end of the warehouse toss intermittent bouts of bright light onto his features, onto the crimson insignia on his chest and the ever-dazzling green of his wide and expectant eyes.

She gulps. It's a vast and somewhat frightening change from how defenseless and pleading he had looked in civvies, slouching apologetically in front of her in the summer heat, blurting out every word she had wanted to hear him say since she'd turned her back on him in the snow. She hadn't let him see just how ready to forgive him she had really been at the time – how ready she still _is_ – because she had sworn to Dinah and to herself that she couldn't afford to hash things out with Wally until she had built up enough of her old self, her magnificent, kicking, aggressively real _self_, to give to him again.

"Cheshire and Red Arrow are doing that… thing they do." He waves his hand. "Where they talk dirty to each other to throw off the gunmen long enough to take them down. Grossest third wheel sitch I've_ever_ been in. Mind if I join you?"

Artemis's lips twitch, just slightly, and she surges to her feet, running past him toward the incoming twelve or so henchmen.

"If you can keep up," she retorts. On her way, she swipes her bow off of the floor without missing a beat and expands it again, stomping to a halt and readily nocking an arrow of the high density polyurethane foam variety.

Wally laughs in bewilderment and then he's off, speeding to her side. Their opponents form a circle around them, all raising their guns, and Artemis finds herself in the familiar position of being spine-to-spine with Wally, their breaths moving through them in tandem.

"By the way," Wally says, his back pressing against hers, lean and chiseled. "Lookin' good in the green, babe!"

"Thanks," Artemis deadpans back dryly, firing the arrow at a mook racing towards her. The foam bursts over him, even managing to spread to another mook beside him. "Looking good in the, uh… same old, same old."

"Yeesh, you could stand to be a little more enthusiastic, especially after I said how great _your_ original costume looked on you after all this time," Wally grouses, zipping briefly away to punch one of the men in the nose so that a _crunch_ erupts in the air. Two of the others fire a barrage of bullets at him, but he dodges them all with cocky ease. It all takes about five seconds before he's with her again, and she's already taken down three of the goons and shot the gun out of the hands of a fourth. Their buddies are starting to look concerned, wisely so.

"So, uh, pressing question here, and you don't have to answer right now, but it's still pressing—"

He speeds forward in a rapid, blinding arc of movement, knocking over six mooks like they're dominoes, before darting back to her again. She can feel him panting against her and it makes her stomach start to heat up, so, to keep her head clear, she sprints forward to take care of the big man with the biggest gun and the ugliest teeth.

"Are we gonna be okay?" he asks over his shoulder. His voice is slightly raised so that she can hear him over the firing machine gun that she's presently working on dodging.

She manages to swiftly kick the gun out of the lackey's hands, earning her an infuriated snarl, but the question throws her enough for him to use his newly freed fists to punch her square in the face.

Her head whips backwards and blood spurts from her right nostril at the point of impact. To her annoyance, she stumbles. She growls and gets her bearings again, jerking her chin down, but she's puzzled to find that in the brief second the whole thing takes, the offending fist and all parts attached to it are gone and she's only met with a thick blast of backwind.

She whirls to her left. Wally stands triumphantly over the unconscious form of the enemy with his arms folded and his eyebrow raised. Artemis rolls her eyes.

"I had him," she snarls. A man with a Bowie knife comes at her from behind with a roar and, without turning around, she elbows him in the face and he falls to the floor.

"I know," Wally replies, stepping gingerly over the body. "I'm allowed a knight in shining armor moment once in a while, right?"

"Give me a break," Artemis huffs, spinning to smash into another goon's head with the butt of her bow, kicking another in the solar plexus. Impartially, she observes, "You got faster."

"A little," he replies cheerfully, and she can hear him whooshing around to the sound of frustrated and agitated expletives from the poor idiots he's fighting. "Impressed?"

"Oh, very," she shoots back absentmindedly, twisting out of the reach of a grasping hand and snatching it in her own to twist it.

"So not that I haven't missed the whole battle banter show," Wally says, "But, uh, you didn't answer my question."

"The one about us being okay?" she huffs, and when she swings her unforgiving limbs, sweat splatters off of them. Her hair is starting to stick to her forehead. It feels wonderful: harum-scarum and ferocious and driven by the inextricable combination of belligerency and adrenaline in her pumping blood, a far step from Tigress's calculated efficiency. "I don't know; you tell me."

Wally opens his mouth, no doubt to do just that, but suddenly, Jade and Roy go sprinting past them, making a beeline for the exit.

"Hey!" Artemis shouts indignantly, ignoring the fact that Wally has just been grabbed from behind by a gunman with particularly strong arms. Whatever; he can deal.

Jade stops, doubles back, and stops beside her.

She flicks her mask up and pecks Artemis on the cheek. Artemis bristles in shock, and Jade tugs the mask back into place, tilting her head.

"Red and I got Dad all tied up nice and neat for the police force," she says quietly. "And it looks like you and your boy toy can take care of the rest of these bozos just fine. There are about seven more heading your way, but they're the closing act for the evening; I promise."

Artemis stares at her, quickly and offhandedly firing an exploding arrow to a henchman heading their way.

"You're leaving?" she asks, and her voice comes out high and a little frightened, a little desperate, an older remnant of the one that had scratched feebly at the closed door beyond which Jade had disappeared.

Jade nods without sympathy. "It's been fun. I'm sure I'll see you around."

"We gotta _go_, Chesh!" Roy yells.

Jade shrugs loosely and then she's gone, her pattering feet carrying her over to Roy's side. He waits to make sure that she's ahead of him before sending a parting look at Artemis and Wally, inclining his head silently, and running off after her.

"Wow," Wally comments, sounding out of breath. "Jerks."

Artemis flicks her eyes to the spot where she'd left Sportsmaster – he's still out, his hands and feet zip-tied, and the rest of the concrete floor is littered with the alternately unconscious and groaning forms of his circus of underlings.

She lowers her bow slightly and opens her mouth to tell him that maybe they've gotten them all, but that's precisely when the seven that Jade had mentioned come barreling around the corner from behind the stack of crates, hunting knives and javelins drawn. Artemis snorts inwardly: Sportsmaster had trained these idiots well.

"Well, okay, back to the matter at hand," Wally says, backing up to stand against her again, "I think with a little combined effort and, uh, probably a few nights of me sleeping on the couch… we have a pretty good chance."

"Combined effort, huh?" Artemis replies, digging her heels downwards to keep herself balanced against the oncoming assaults. Their opponents seem to be silently deciding amongst themselves who will attack first.

"Uh-huh," Wally replies with an easy nod.

"I don't know," she murmurs. "I really don't. I don't think either of us really _can_ know how things are gonna go, but I…"

"Do you—" Wally gestures inarticulately. "I mean, would you be willing to—"

"I want them to be okay, Wally," she whispers, so that none of the lackeys will hear his name. Wally stiffens to attention, and she can practically feel his grin in the air.

"Me too," he tells her earnestly, and that's when the goons finally get impatient and charge at them.

Artemis switches to battle mode in an instant, but the discussion is not over – she thinks, with slight amusement, that it figures they're back to their old ways: serious relationship talks in the middle of life-threatening situations. Maybe it's a good sign.

"This isn't gonna be easy," she says, whirling around until the heel of her boot collides with a mook's nose. "I mean, we knew that."

"Right," Wally agrees, punching another in the jaw. "Totally. Totally! And look – I've been doing a lot of thinking—"

"Me, too—"

"And the thing is—"

"We can't go back," they say in unison, "but we can go forward."

The both of them freeze and look over their shoulders at each other at the same time. There's a split second's eye contact between them, but it's enough for Wally to blur around, scoop Artemis into his arms, and bolt out of the fray, knocking over several mooks like bowling pins in his haste. He darts around to hide behind a particularly large crate on the other side of the warehouse and sets her down.

She locks eyes with him, pulling her mask just slightly off of her face, keeping it bunched in her curled thumb just over her eyebrows. (His guts feel like they unravel at the sight of her battle-flushed cheeks and slightly glimmering forehead.)

"Say that again," she orders.

"Dick told me," he says instead of doing what she wants. Her eyes widen.

"Zatanna told _me_," she replies, pointing to herself.

Wally sputters out a laugh. "They're conspiring against us, babe. Just like old times."

The corners of her mouth quiver upwards slightly. Wally only seems to be further uplifted by the sight.

"Look," he says breathlessly. "What's done is done. You can count me in for the ride no matter how bumpy it gets and even if we run out of gas you can count me in for pushing the car to—never mind; the point is, I'm in your corner the whole way. Trust me. Always have been. Uh, discounting the first few months I knew you. I was in your corner then, too, I guess; I was just… booing you. But—"

"Wally, I need you to say it again," she whispers, cutting him off. He blinks and stares down at her, at her uncharacteristically vulnerable face and her fiercely imploring eyes.

He swallows.

"I've got your back," he tells her, hushed. "And you've got mine. What we had was great, but just because it's over doesn't mean we are, and I like you, Artemis; I like you and love you and want to stick with you and I'm ready to go forward with you. To the finish line. Lots of other race metaphors I don't wanna dig around for."

"Ugh," she scoffs, but she's sure that her giddy face betrays her. "I could kiss you right now. Or maybe _kill_ you for putting us through all of this."

Something sparks in the backs of his eyes and she sighs with a smirk that, truthfully, makes her whole face and body feel lighter, more agile, more alive.

Wally suddenly grabs her elbow and spins her around, dipping her swiftly in his arms and kissing her full on the mouth. She blinks widely up at him for a moment before relaxing, slinging her arms around the back of his neck and prying his lips open with her tongue. She presumes that their temporary hiding place is unbeknownst to the last four mooks standing, since there aren't any bullets interrupting Wally's taste on her teeth.

He draws away after a long and languid time with an exhilarated glint in his eyes. "I'd say you could decide later, but who knows – we might not get another 'later.'"

"You're the worst," Artemis laughs. Just then, the clamor of running footsteps approaches them and effectively cuts off any further jibes, and Artemis drops her head upside-down to survey the group of combat-ready mooks that have just finished surrounding them. With a wicked glint in her eyes, she slips out of Wally's grip, twisting his nose.

"Okay, playtime's over," she says, pivoting to face him. "Maneuver seven."

The déjà vu builds itself around her rapidly: they're kids again, battle-lust bursting from their joints, clumsy kisses and matching bloody noses, fiercely tangling their fingers with each other's when the sun goes down. Wally, a few new freckles and joyful eyes, beams and links his hands together, and when she steps onto them and vaults herself into the air with his boost, somersaulting through nothing and holding her breath with her arms spread wide, it's the first time that connecting her foot with something on the downward plunge has been the last thing on her mind.


	17. Chapter 17

**You know how sometimes at the Oscars, the winners get really blubbery and emotional and cry a lot and don't finish their speech because they just can't stop talking and thanking everyone so the TV cuts to commercials? I'm not winning an Oscar or anything really but that's basically what I'm doing and I'm counting on you guys to be the TV. **

**So like, when I started this fic, I was thinking it would be five, maybe six chapters. And I really did kind of start it on an impulse, like some kind of knee-jerk denial thing after "Endgame" shattered me as a person. You were all there. You all remember my tears and my howls of agony. You all remember how I was so depressed I didn't write my French paper (but don't worry; I got a B+ in French so I'm fine). **

**The point is, I really was not expecting this to become as long or involved or… well-received as it did? Like, this thing has its own tag on Tumblr. There are people who liveblog this and draw fanart and make fanmixes and graphics and various other things that just make me wanna die. And honestly, it's been for you guys all along. I remember seeing a lot of the fandom get ruined by that finale and thinking, "I should try to fix that." So this isn't even just a fix-it fic for the show; it's for the fandom, too. I tried to put in as many things as I could, as many slighted relationships and sidelined characters as I could fit. I tried to remember everything the fandom said they wanted to see more of in season 2 so I could try to squeeze it in here. So the scope of this is a lot larger than I'd ever predicted, but I'm grateful to you guys for helping me spread my horizons and try new things and challenge myself. I'm grateful to you guys for all of the support and kindness you've been sending my way since I started this thing; I'm grateful to every review, every reblog, every little click of that "like" button, every one of those kudos on AO3, every follow and favorite on FFNet. Man, even if you've never said a word about this fic directly to me, I'm grateful that you've read it, because that's what it's here for.**

**The biggest thanks, though, go out to Libby, who has been in my corner since I first started brainstorming on Skype, who has beta'd nearly every chapter, who has always made me feel like I'm making something awesome; to Emma, who's been just as wonderful, always cheering me on and asking for more and sharpening her pitchfork with alacrity and love; to Cat, who's been making stunning graphics for _every single chapter_ and still finds the time to _liveblog it_ and make every dragging night of forcing the words out feel totally worthwhile; and to Pyrin, Maria,PJ, hmmaster, and everyone else who's reviewed every chapter; to nygma619, for making me think harder about this fic than I'd expected to, in a great way; to Star,mrsgingles, sodalimepop, Nighty, Stitch, Nemo, Hannah, threshecutioner, young-at-heart, opaul, and cynessie for all of the _really amazing and motivating stuff_they've made for this? like jesus christ, _the talent_; to Katelyn, for giving me the inspiration for the Conner-Artemis scene in Chapter 2 and for beta-ing the first three chapters for me; to Izzy, who has sat through _so many_ hours of me second-guessing myself and who's always been so perfectly constructive and helpful and supportive and smokin' hot; and… christ, to _all of you_. If I could track all of you down and send you personal thank-you cards for all you've done to help me get to the end of this, then I would. Maybe I will. I _am_ Nancy Drew, after all. Really, this wouldn't have been possible without any of you. You've all been with me since I wrote my first fic for this dumb show in August of 2011, and I never thought I'd get to where I am today, with people actually _reading_ my stuff –_wanting_ to read my stuff, asking me what I'll be writing next, telling me what they think of the things that I write, _drawing fanart for them_ – jesus. **

**Thanks to all of you guys for making me feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile. I love all of you a lot and I doubt I'll ever be able to convey my gratitude adequately. I just wanna kiss all your faces and— **

**Crap. The TV cut me off.**

**Happy June 20th, everyone. Thanks for joining me on this ride. I love you. **

* * *

**_The Watchtower_**

**_August 8, 2017 16:04 EDT_**

* * *

"Attention all Team members: report to the mission room for a new assignment immediately."

Artemis has to bite back a laugh as Wally scatters pecking kisses across her cheeks, down her throat, back up to her chin. His hands are resting lightly at her waist and her arms are slung around the back of his neck and she can feel his smirk branding itself into her skin, and the wall against which she's currently pressed is mussing her hair.

"This is your co-captain speaking. What Aqualad _meant_ to say is that we need all of you suited up in all your finery and in the mission room for a briefing in five. Chop chop."

Wally snorts and Artemis hooks a finger under his jaw, tilting his face up so that she can properly take his lips in hers, messy and needy. He smiles against her teeth and his chuckle fills her slanted mouth, and she tugs him closer to her until their knees bump clumsily against one another's, and as her hand strays downwards, he groans, sagging slightly. His fingers tangle needily into her hair and she sighs through her nose, closing her eyes to the minute sound of his heartbeat, to the way his taste – toothpaste and the waffles he'd made that morning – is finally something close to familiar again.

"This is an all-points bulletin that we_ seem_ to be missing two of our senior members. I'm _sure_ that they're on their way, though, and _not_ scandalizing the security cameras in a corner somewhere."

At that, Artemis can't help snickering, breaking off to raise an eyebrow at Wally, whose mind seems to be catching up to the fact that they're not making out anymore.

"We really should get going," she mutters. "Kaldur and Dick are probably—"

"Going to understand," Wally finishes in a low voice, snatching her mouth again, parting her lips with his tongue. She lets out a long and heavy breath and he grabs one of her thighs in his hand, hiking it up to rest at his hip, and Artemis forgets all about punctuality.

"Artemis and Kid Flash, we kindly request that the two of you cease whatever activities you're—"

"Kaldur, what have I told you about using the c-word in this house?"

Neither Artemis nor Wally pay any mind to the announcements, and Artemis's fingernails dig slightly into Wally's suit as he withdraws, moves his chin down, and kisses her at the jugular.

"Can you guys either get a room or get your heads in the game?" Raquel's voice suddenly cuts in, echoing reproachfully in what seems like the entire hallway. "Just because you spent two weeks in the City of Lights doesn't mean you get to start frenching on the job."

"Bus-ted," Wally sings under his breath with an innocent grin, not sounding sorry at all. He and Artemis immediately spring apart, raising their hands at either side of their heads in surrender and Artemis mentally puts a tick in Raquel's square of the "Team Members Who Have Walked In On Artemis and Wally" chart.

Raquel stares at them with a quirked eyebrow and a knowing smirk under narrowed eyes. Her hands are slung in the pockets of her trusty brown-and-black costume, and her boot is tapping on the tile floor.

"Yeah, why don't you show me just how sorry you both are by hurrying up?" she suggests. "I've got Amistad with a sitter and I'd like to be back with him before sunrise, if that's okay with you."

Wally salutes her, striding forward. After Raquel turns her back and rounds the corner, Artemis jogs to catch up to him, falls into step just behind him, and swiftly swats his rear.

He jumps and glances over his shoulder with a mock scandalized expression. She snorts, shoves at him, and takes two large steps ahead so that they walk into the mission room side-by-side.

Kaldur, Dick, M'gann, Conner, Zatanna, and Raquel are all gathered under the holographic screens, and standing on the outskirts of the small cluster – Artemis nearly trips in her tracks – is Roy.

He catches her eye and mutters something she can't understand, looking pointedly away. She wrestles back her knowing grin and comes to a halt with Wally among the rest of their original Team, folding her arms at her chest.

"All right, Mom, we're here," she says, raising her eyebrows in Kaldur's direction.

"What's with the 911?" Wally inquires with a laugh.

"Yeah, and what was that about needing all Team members?" Artemis adds. "I only see seven and two of them aren't even _on_ the Team, so, explanation, please, Kaldur."

Artemis can't be sure, but she swears that Kaldur rolls his eyes at her.

"It was not a 911," he tells her. "We were merely hoping that, since your vacation, you would not have lost sight of the importance of promptness for mission briefings. As for your second question, the rest of the Team will be arriving shortly." His voice darkens, just minutely. "The weight of this new mission is far too great to reveal on a large scale just y—"

"C'mon, Kaldur," Dick cuts in, popping into sight out of nowhere. "Lighten up. Trust me, it's a valuable asset to have when you're co-leading a Team."

"He has been giving me co-leading advice for the past three hours," Kaldur stage-whispers. "If I had known this would be the case, I would not have agreed to split leadership with him in the first place."

"Dude, he's a great leader," Wally assures Kaldur with a clap on the shoulder. "Y'know, when he doesn't have to keep secrets. I mean, not that he isn't _good_ at it; it just really doesn't do wonders for his mood."

"Oh, and you, of course, were Mr. Sunshine through the whole ordeal," Dick retorts, but jokingly. "I'm gonna have to tell you about it sometime, Artemis. Two years later and I _still_ don't ever want to see another tub of Chubby Hubby again."

"He is _lying_," Wally shouts, pointing a stiff, accusatory finger at Dick. "Do _not_ listen to him."

"Boys, behave," M'gann giggles, floating over to sling her arms between Kaldur and Conner and hang there on her tiptoes.

"Please," Zatanna agrees, pulling the same pose between Dick and Wally – Dick looks inordinately thrilled. "I will turn this giant space HQ around."

Raquel glances over at Roy before shrugging and throwing one arm casually around him, tugging him slightly down. He grimaces, but makes no attempts to escape.

"Is anybody gonna address the elephant in the room?" Wally asks after a moment.

"Uh, does it go by the name of Chubby Hubby?" Zatanna fires back. Dick snickers.

"No," Wally retorts a bit indignantly, and Artemis is sure his ears are going scarlet behind the red adornments on his costume. "It goes by the name of _Dick having a new costume_."

It's only then that Artemis notices – Dick's costume is, indeed, different; it fits him more snugly and has slightly less padding, but the most noticeable new detail is the blue emblem on his chest that continues over his shoulders and down his arms, ending at his middle and ring fingers in two cyan stripes.

"What," Artemis says slowly with a disbelieving laugh, pointing to Dick, "are _those_?"

Dick smiles complacently at her and glances at his hands with innocence, turning them over and flexing his fingers. Zatanna detaches from him and Wally, watching the scene with relish.

"I like to call them…" He looks back up, waggling his eyebrows. "The chicest creation to come out of Gotham City?"

"I like to call them ridiculous," Artemis retorts with a shake of her head, but Wally elbows her.

"You're insane," he says sagely. "Dude, those are the coolest things I've ever _seen_; the ladies are going to be climbing all over you."

Artemis scoffs loudly, half-mocking and half-offended.

"The most important question, though," Wally continues with solemness, "is this: _do they glow in the dark_?"

Dick nods, slowly, with a widening grin. Wally immediately raises his hand and Dick slaps his palm against it in a high-five that makes Conner wince and grumble.

"You are my hero," Wally says.

"Wow, get a room," Zatanna deadpans.

"Perfect; we'll use yours." Wally grins triumphantly over at her and she shakes her head.

"And here I was starting to think I missed you," she says blithely, causing Wally's face to fall. "Walls, I'm kidding; I'm kidding!"

"So you _did_ miss me?" Wally perks up slightly.

"More than I could _bear_, darlin'," Zatanna gasps out in an over-the-top Southern accent, grasping his upper arm. "Why, I cried for _days_; absolute days!"

"Can I address the other elephant in the room?" Artemis interjects before turning her attention to Roy. "Namely, the Prodigal Red Arrow?"

"Shut up, Crock," Roy grumbles without much investment. "Somebody's gotta keep you twerps in line. And I need to make sure West doesn't wind up in some alternate dimension again when he's supposed to be on perimeter."

"I'm not talking to you," Wally says loudly. "Not until you take back the _calendar_ you gave me. Meanest belated birthday present _ever_."

"Red Arrow's gonna be rejoining the Team part-time," Dick explains over Wally's wounded yelling – and the happiness he feels is tangibly evident in his chipper voice. "And Zatanna and Rocket are our League liaisons, so they'll be helping us out on this next mission."

"Which is…?" Artemis prompts him.

The jocular air in the room sinks to a standstill. Artemis glances to Kaldur first for a response, and is taken aback by the grimness in his eyes when they meet hers. Dick seems to notice the change in mood and sighs, crossing his arms at his chest and frowning at the floor.

"Batgirl and I've been working on tracking down Vandal Savage since last June," he explains. Artemis marvels, not for the first time, at how quickly his tone can change from delighted and devious to solemn and focused. "Since the Summit, the Light's gotten themselves dispersed all over the globe. Luthor's in the world spotlight now, so at least we have eyes on him, and now that the Team's finally starting to bounce back from the bad press we and the League got during the invasion, it's a lot easier to keep those eyes open. Recon in Taipei revealed that Ra's al-Ghul is, just like I found out in December, alive, and that he and Black Manta have been rubbing elbows, which means the Light and the Shadows have gotten over their little lover's quarrel. Intel from Red Arrow and an, uh, _anonymous source_—" Artemis snorts – _Jade_. "Sportsmaster's back in the Light's good graces again and is working on the distribution of some of the new Reach drink our raid on LexCorp missed. Batgirl, Wonder Girl, and Artemis's check of Queen Bee's new compound in the Bialyan desert revealed some distinctive boom tube energy signals, and there are still missing kids unaccounted for in some of the hot spots we checked out last spring while we were looking for some of the Light's possible meta-gene guinea pigs. As for the Reach, they've been convicted of enough war crimes to keep them locked up in the Phantom Zone for the next eternity or so, and the Zone's being monitored by scientists on Rann."

"Up until this point," Kaldur picks up for him, stepping forward, "Vandal Savage has been the only remaining member of the Light who has been unaccounted for. The Brain has remained in the League's custody, though Black Manta has, obviously, managed to escape. Klarion has been attempting to steal an item called the Amulet of Anubis from Doctor Fate, though he has been unsuccessful. We do not know what he requires this for, but discovering that is one of our top priorities in the coming months. Though we have no sightings of Queen Bee, we are certain that she is behind the compound, which the Justice League suspects is being used for experimentation with the meta-gene. Just because the Reach is gone does not mean their research has not taken the attention of… other interested parties."

"So we're going to have our hands full," Dick continues. "But everything pertaining to Earth is going to be handled by the junior members of the Team, who'll be led by Guardian. The rest of us—"

"Will be initiating communications with Apokolips," Kaldur finishes, and Artemis is sure that the name chills the entire Watchtower. "Which is where Batgirl's year-long search has led us."

"Whoa," Wally breathes, sounding staggered.

"Our liaisons for the intergalactic relations will be the Forever People," Dick adds, and Artemis notices Conner brighten out of the corner of her eye.

"Wait – hold on," Artemis interjects, unable to hold back her questions any longer. "You're saying Vandal Savage has been MIA for the past year because he's on _Apokolips_?"

"Got great taste in vacation spots, doesn't he?" Dick quips, but then he nods. "Yeah. Apparently he and Darkseid have been getting pretty friendly. Or, uh, as friendly as a couple of guys like Vandal Savage and Darkseid _can_ get."

"Right now, the League's top priority is reconnaissance," Zatanna inserts, and when all eyes turn to her, she puts her hands on her hips. Artemis is struck, suddenly, by how grown up she is, how grown up they all are, facilitating an investigation that's going to take them across the galaxy. "As usual. We aren't trying to stop Savage just yet. We need to figure out what he's doing first."

"Dude," Wally exclaims, brightening. "Space voyage?! Seriously? Cool!"

Artemis swats him on the shoulder. "No, _not_ cool. I don't think we can take independent study in space."

She could laugh at the way Wally seems to visibly deflate, but she reels it in. He sticks his lower lip out at her and she groans, rolling her eyes skyward.

"Good news for _you_," Raquel says primly, "is no, there's no space voyage. Not yet."

"There's a yet in there," Wally points out, and M'gann laughs.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, buddy," Dick tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. "For now, we've got a lot to do."

"When's the rest of the Team getting here?" Conner asks, his eyes wandering to the empty zeta tubes.

Wally lets out a loud, obvious groan. "Oh, _man_. I completely forgot I'm gonna be on the same team as Bart now." He shoots a look Artemis's way. "If I die of a heart attack by the time I'm twenty-five, you can blame him."

"Or I can blame the Chubby Hubby," Artemis fires back without missing a beat, and at Wally's horrified expression, peals of clamoring laughter rise to the ceiling.

"So," Dick says to them when they've all quieted down, leaning easily against the wall and smiling, and it's a smile Artemis hasn't seen in years. "Business as usual?"

Artemis glances to Wally, and he slips his hand into hers, grinning the same freckled, game-ready grin that he does on sunny days when they have nowhere to go but somewhere new.

"What could go wrong?" he asks her jocularly.

"Say that again and I'll kill you," she retorts in an instant. "Slowly and painfully."

He smiles cheekily and she kisses him without discretion or shame, holding his face at either side.

M'gann and Conner both perk up at the sight and smile warmly at each other before blushing and glancing away again, but their fingers find one another's, tangling gently and easily together. Kaldur bows his head contentedly, closing his eyes and curving his lips. Zatanna rolls her misty eyes and mutters "ew," and Raquel shakes her head with ill-concealed fondness, and Roy clears his throat with ill-concealed discomfort. The Earth moves patiently behind their picket line of silhouettes: so much taller now than they used to be.

_"Kid, you sure about this?" _

_"Yeah. For now, anyway. Trust me, trying on the scarlet suit's definitely gonna happen someday, but… I don't know. I gotta keep myself grounded for a while. Plus – I doubt these guys could last another second without me. And you'd lose major points with Iris if you lost the costume; she digs it."_

_"Wise guy. All right; suit yourself. But just know the offer's up anytime." _

_"I'll keep that in mind." _

The zeta tubes start to blaze to life with incoming Team members. Their numbers and their names crowd into each other in the open air, in every crevice, and they are the messiest symphony Artemis has ever heard.

She'd seen Jade the week before, when she'd been on bonding Gotham patrol with Batgirl and Robin (half of which she and Batgirl had spent giving Robin advice on how to ask Wonder Girl to his junior prom). A lot of jokes had been made about carved birds and clipped wings, and Jade had pinned her to the ground with such force that Artemis's head had throbbed against the pavement and it was the closest she'd ever get to a hug, and she hadn't even tried to conceal her smile.

Her mother had braided her hair for the first time in years two nights ago, murmuring promises and pride to her and rubbing her shoulder and kissing the back of her head in the same spot that Jade had injured it.

She'd only come dangerously close to killing or mutilating Wally two more times since June, and the nightmares of watching him burn and scream have finally begun to fade, and they'd just happened to glance at Palo Alto apartment ads that had just happened to be open on Wally's still-dusty laptop, and they'd just happened to have sent in applications for the Stanford spring semester, and Artemis had just happened to go over to his parents' house and help him unpack every haphazardly stowed item in the cardboard towers at the foot of his bed, one by one, memory by memory, until he couldn't stand not having a sandwich in his hand anymore and bolted out to make himself three BLTs. In his absence, she'd privately coveted a photograph of six crowded-together kids in front of a mountain that seemed every year to grow smaller than they were, and she'd run her fingers over their bright eyes and fearless smiles and linked arms with a care she wouldn't have guessed herself to possess.

"Yep," Dick comments under his breath with false exasperation, his quirked lips deceptively nostalgic in the light from the sun and the stars. "Business as usual."

Wally, to show off, scoops Artemis up in his arms so that she shrieks and flails. As he holds her up, beaming toothily at her (a dusting of fresh freckles splayed out over his nose from the new summer sun), she crosses her legs and links her hands behind his neck and rolls her eyes at the rest of the Team like she can't believe her own misfortune.

Still, though – this is the kind of business she'll never mind doing for free.

* * *

**_NEVER THE END…_**


End file.
